As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Kickoff Call.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my company, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, ideally you can learn from my agonizing blunders and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small companies maintain their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Use website and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting customer connections through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially eye-catching for companies aiming to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply worked reliably with marginal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new device that will revolutionize your organization … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing points that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a couple of even more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole tech facilities from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing lost efficiency throughout the button.
However ultimately, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-term option for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a large blunder. The issues began piling up rapidly, until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, taking care of subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals that need to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. However the issue lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely declared “web server concerns” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any type of sense, because the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was entirely inappropriate and just really did not 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 undependable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag came with costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Kickoff Call
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the economical cost for accessibility to numerous features. However I promptly learned this cheap base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core capability. Instantly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out techniques or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Kickoff Call.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had horrible engagement. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant error. The cons significantly exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software program is excellent, but the sheer volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle crucial features capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. However in knowledge, it educated me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software typically obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life less complicated, not much more challenging and messy.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins depend on.
- Look for objective evaluations. Pleased assistance examines imply much less if too much concerns suggest bad overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single remedy can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental improvements normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I found out to be more skeptical of “also great to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the appeal of shiny new objects. The devices you utilize daily ought to earn trust through transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.