As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to streamline operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel LeadConnector.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a dream come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business needs, ideally you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small companies maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing client relationships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for businesses seeking to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with very little fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly change your service … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing points that I ‘d learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a few more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire technology framework from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– and also managing lost productivity during the switch.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term solution for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The concerns began piling up promptly, till it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Protection Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely pointless emails had actually been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I anxiously tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the trouble lingered.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “server issues” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any type of sense, considering that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally undesirable and just really did not benefit my organization. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of total, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag featured pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel LeadConnector
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget friendly price for accessibility to numerous features. However I swiftly discovered this affordable base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core functionality. Suddenly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send an email via their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to numerous dollars in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices plummet practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out methods or tried every repairing trick, I can hardly push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel LeadConnector.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had awful interaction. The only point I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed charges, broken features, and terrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a huge blunder. The cons significantly surpassed any type of benefits.
No software application is excellent, but the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of crucial features competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software commonly obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life much easier, not much more challenging and messy.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins trust fund.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Delighted support evaluates suggest much less if too much concerns indicate poor overall use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can completely meet every distinct service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental enhancements typically exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I learned to be more skeptical of “too great to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the allure of shiny new items. The devices you utilize daily need to earn depend on through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.