As an agency owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to enhance operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Listings.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my company, it seemed like a dream become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, ideally you can gain from my painful blunders and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social media kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting client relationships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically attractive for companies aiming to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with very little hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will reinvent your company … The yard often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a couple of even more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching over systems was going to require migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire technology framework from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of just some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing lost efficiency during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-term remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a huge blunder. The problems started accumulating promptly, till it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, managing subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever seemed to be operating fine … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that need to NOT have received them. This took place three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were at fault. Yet this description really did not make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was entirely unacceptable and just really did not help my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in completely various areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, private, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low cost tag came with expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Listings
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to numerous features. However I swiftly discovered this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core performance. Instantly my charge card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send an email through their web servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to numerous dollars in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plunge virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every troubleshooting technique, I might barely push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Listings.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had awful involvement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge mistake. The cons substantially outweighed any type of advantages.
No software is excellent, but the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage vital functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around new software application frequently obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life easier, not more complex and messy.
- Openness builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys count on.
- Look for honest reviews. Happy support reviews mean much less if excessive problems indicate poor general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can flawlessly meet every special company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step renovations commonly outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more doubtful of “as well excellent to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you use daily ought to make trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.