As a company owner for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to streamline operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Merge Contacts.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a desire happened on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Use site and social media forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer connections via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly appealing for services seeking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with very little hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your company … The grass usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a few more stress led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew changing platforms was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole tech framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of simply several of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– in addition to managing lost efficiency throughout the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a much better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The problems started accumulating quickly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I came across.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be operating fine … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to customers who should NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the issue lingered.
When I desperately connected to their support team, they slightly declared “server concerns” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely undesirable and simply really did not help my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle total, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low price tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Merge Contacts
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget-friendly rate for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I promptly learned this affordable base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed each time you send out an email with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open rates plunge virtually over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every repairing method, I can hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Merge Contacts.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had horrible interaction. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big mistake. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software application is ideal, but the sheer quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical functions properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software program often covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not extra challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys trust fund.
- Seek impartial reviews. Satisfied assistance reviews indicate less if extreme issues suggest poor overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single solution can flawlessly fulfill every special organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “as well excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the attraction of shiny new things. The devices you utilize daily must make trust fund via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.