As an agency owner for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to streamline procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel LinkedIn Integration.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my company, it seemed like a dream become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and falling short) to change to this preferred new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, with any luck you can pick up from my unpleasant blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid local business maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients receive the best messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer connections through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly appealing for companies aiming to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with marginal hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will reinvent your organization … The lawn frequently looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may lower friction points that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few more frustrations led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was going to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an overview of simply a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– not to mention taking care of lost productivity throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-term option for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a big blunder. The concerns started accumulating quickly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, managing membership expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to individuals that must NOT have received them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I anxiously tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any kind of sense, because the mistakes continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely inappropriate and just really did not work for my business. I have thousands of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complicated.
Easy tasks like editing workflows included digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, private, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low price tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel LinkedIn Integration
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the budget-friendly price for accessibility to so many features. However I quickly discovered this inexpensive base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core capability. Instantly my bank card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send out an email with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices drop practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every troubleshooting method, I could hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel LinkedIn Integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had horrible engagement. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
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 benefits.
No software program is best, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle critical functions capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application typically obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life easier, not more complex and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins trust fund.
- Look for objective testimonials. Delighted assistance reviews suggest less if extreme problems suggest bad general use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single service can flawlessly meet every one-of-a-kind business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step renovations normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more cynical of “also excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less lured by the allure of glossy new objects. The tools you make use of daily must gain trust fund with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.