As a company owner for over a years, I rely upon software application and automation to streamline procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Joyce Boss.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire come to life on paper. That would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, hopefully you can learn from my painful blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation demands.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the best messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically appealing for businesses seeking to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply worked accurately with minimal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a new tool that will revolutionize your company … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of even more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I understood changing platforms was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire technology facilities from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of just some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling shed productivity throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel providing a much better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The concerns began piling up swiftly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I ran into.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event reminders, managing subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unimportant emails had been sent to customers that ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the issue lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any feeling, given that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my business. I have thousands of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely various sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage total, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Joyce Boss
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the economical cost for accessibility to so many features. Yet I quickly learned this inexpensive base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core functionality. Instantly my credit card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to numerous dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every fixing method, I might barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Joyce Boss.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had horrible involvement. The only point I can assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant mistake. The cons substantially surpassed any advantages.
No software is best, however the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle vital functions competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application frequently covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life easier, not extra complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages count on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Pleased support evaluates indicate much less if excessive concerns suggest poor total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can perfectly fulfill every distinct business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step improvements normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I found out to be extra hesitant of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily need to earn trust via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.