As a company owner for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to streamline procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Local Service Ads (LSA).
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to streamline and scale my company, it looked like a dream happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with 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 help local business maintain their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting consumer partnerships via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically attractive for services looking to settle their technology pile.
Generally, it just functioned reliably with very little fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s talking about a brand-new device that will change your company … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower friction points that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a couple of more irritations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire technology infrastructure from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of just some of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing shed productivity during the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a large blunder. The concerns began accumulating promptly, till it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event tips, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unimportant emails had been sent to customers that must NOT have received them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the issue lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they slightly asserted “server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any type of sense, since the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely inappropriate and just didn’t help my service. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle general, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag included expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Local Service Ads (LSA)
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the budget-friendly rate for access to numerous features. But I promptly discovered this cheap base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices plunge almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting method, I can hardly nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Local Service Ads (LSA).
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful interaction. The only thing I can think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, broken features, and horrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant error. The cons dramatically exceeded any type of advantages.
No software application is excellent, but the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial functions competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software typically obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life simpler, not much more complex and messy.
- Openness constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins count on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Satisfied support examines mean less if excessive concerns suggest poor total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind business demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental renovations generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Simply put, I found out to be much more hesitant of “also great to be true” marketing cases and much less tempted by the attraction of shiny new objects. The tools you utilize daily need to gain count on through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.