As a company owner for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to streamline operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel Masterclass.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a dream come to life theoretically. That would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service demands, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and clients get the best messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing customer connections via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly attractive for companies seeking to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with minimal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s discussing a new device that will certainly change your company … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I would certainly learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few more frustrations led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized changing systems was going to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire tech framework from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an overview of simply several of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling lost performance during the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-term service for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge error. The problems started accumulating rapidly, till it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event reminders, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be operating fine … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent out to customers that should NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “server issues” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, given that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, private, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag featured pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Masterclass
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the cost effective rate for accessibility to a lot of features. However I rapidly learned this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, however simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates drop almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out practices or attempted every fixing trick, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Masterclass.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had terrible interaction. The only point I might believe that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a big error. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any advantages.
No software program is perfect, however the sheer quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with essential features effectively or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software program often obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your work life simpler, not a lot more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins count on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Happy assistance examines suggest much less if excessive concerns suggest poor general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can perfectly satisfy every distinct business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements typically outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be much more skeptical of “too good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily should gain depend on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.