As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to enhance operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Mortgage Snapshot.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a dream happened on paper. Who wouldn’t want a solitary service that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and falling short) to change to this preferred new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business keep their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing client relationships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically attractive for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly revolutionize your service … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, yet a few more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an introduction of just several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning everything over– and also managing lost performance during the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big blunder. The concerns began piling up quickly, until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, managing membership expirations and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to users that ought to NOT have obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the trouble continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “web server issues” were to blame. But this description really did not make any sense, given that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely undesirable and just didn’t help my service. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle overall, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Mortgage Snapshot
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the budget friendly rate for accessibility to a lot of features. But I rapidly learned this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices plummet nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every fixing method, I can barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Mortgage Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had awful interaction. The only point I might assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and awful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big blunder. The cons dramatically exceeded any advantages.
No software application is perfect, yet the large quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of important features properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application often obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your work life less complicated, not much more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Satisfied assistance reviews mean less if too much issues imply inadequate total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can flawlessly meet every special business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step renovations typically surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I learned to be more skeptical of “also great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily ought to gain trust fund through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.