As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to streamline operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Marketing Agency Playbook.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always looking to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a dream come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, hopefully you can pick up from my unpleasant blunders and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it managed everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and customers get the best messages at the right time. Usage website and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for organizations looking to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just worked reliably with marginal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will change your business … The lawn frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of even more disappointments led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I recognized changing platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-term remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large mistake. The issues started piling up quickly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Protection Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning penalty … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent to individuals that should NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the trouble persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance group, they slightly declared “web server issues” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, since the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my company. I have countless get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Marketing Agency Playbook
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the budget friendly cost for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I rapidly learned this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to numerous dollars in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, yet simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices drop almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every fixing trick, I can barely push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Marketing Agency Playbook.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had horrible interaction. The only thing I might think that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, busted features, and awful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive blunder. The cons dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is ideal, however the large quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial features competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. However in hindsight, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program usually obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life much easier, not more complex and untidy.
- Transparency develops depend on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins trust fund.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Pleased assistance examines imply less if extreme problems suggest poor general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can perfectly meet every unique company demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental enhancements generally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be a lot more unconvinced of “as well good to be true” marketing cases and less lured by the allure of shiny new things. The devices you utilize daily should gain depend on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.