As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to streamline operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel ManyChat.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my service, it appeared like a desire come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, hopefully you can gain from my excruciating mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help local business keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the right messages at the right time. Usage site and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically appealing for companies seeking to settle their technology pile.
Generally, it just worked accurately with very little fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm call of “shiny object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few even more disappointments led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology framework from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning everything over– in addition to handling lost performance during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term option for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large blunder. The issues started accumulating swiftly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, taking care of subscription expirations and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning fine … till suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent out to users who should NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the issue continued.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they slightly claimed “server problems” were to blame. However this explanation really did not make any sense, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally undesirable and simply really did not benefit my service. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low cost tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel ManyChat
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget-friendly price for access to many features. Yet I promptly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core capability. Instantly my bank card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices drop virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out techniques or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I can hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel ManyChat.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only thing I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, broken features, and awful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big error. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, however the large quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage vital functions capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application often obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your job life simpler, not a lot more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages depend on.
- Look for honest testimonials. Pleased support examines indicate much less if extreme issues imply inadequate total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary remedy can perfectly fulfill every distinct service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental renovations generally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I found out to be a lot more skeptical of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you use daily ought to earn depend on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.