As an agency owner for over a years, I depend on software and automation to simplify procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel Media Library Revamp.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to streamline and scale my organization, it seemed like a dream become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, ideally you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist local business keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the best messages at the right time. Use site and social networks kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing customer connections with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically eye-catching for services aiming to settle their technology pile.
Generally, it just worked accurately with minimal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will transform your organization … The grass usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a couple of more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole technology framework from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a summary of just some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing lost performance during the switch.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large mistake. The issues started piling up quickly, until it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unimportant e-mails had been sent to users who ought to NOT have actually received them. This happened three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they slightly claimed “server issues” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally undesirable and simply didn’t benefit my business. I have thousands of calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally undependable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low price tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Media Library Revamp
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the cost effective cost for access to so many features. But I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send an email with their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates plunge practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or tried every repairing method, I could hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Media Library Revamp.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had horrible involvement. The only point I could think that would be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge blunder. The cons significantly outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software is ideal, however the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with crucial features properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software usually covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life less complicated, not a lot more difficult and untidy.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins trust.
- Seek objective reviews. Delighted assistance examines suggest much less if excessive concerns indicate poor general usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary option can flawlessly fulfill every distinct organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step improvements typically exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more skeptical of “as well great to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily ought to make count on through transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.