As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to enhance operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Microsoft Teams Integration.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to streamline and scale my company, it looked like a dream happened on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business needs, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies maintain their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships through effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially appealing for businesses looking to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with minimal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “glossy things syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will revolutionize your business … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few even more frustrations led me to think possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole tech facilities from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of just a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– and also handling lost efficiency during the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term option for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a huge error. The issues started accumulating swiftly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating fine … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent to customers who must NOT have actually received them. This happened three days straight, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I anxiously attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any sense, because the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not help my company. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle overall, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Microsoft Teams Integration
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the budget-friendly rate for access to numerous features. Yet I swiftly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core capability. Suddenly my bank card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open prices plunge virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending techniques or attempted every repairing technique, I could hardly push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Microsoft Teams Integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had awful interaction. The only point I could assume that would be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant mistake. The cons dramatically surpassed any type of benefits.
No software is excellent, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of vital features effectively or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. But in knowledge, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program often covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your job life simpler, not more difficult and messy.
- Openness constructs count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages depend on.
- Look for objective evaluations. Satisfied assistance assesses suggest much less if too much issues imply poor total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can completely meet every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements typically outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be much more skeptical of “too great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily need to gain depend on via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.