As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Nested Folders.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a dream come to life on paper. Who would not want a single service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this preferred new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, hopefully you can learn from my excruciating blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and customers obtain the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and increase revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing client connections via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly appealing for businesses seeking to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned reliably with minimal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm call of “shiny object disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new device that will transform your business … The turf usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a couple of more aggravations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology framework from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– as well as taking care of lost productivity throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a better long-lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big error. The concerns began piling up rapidly, up until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working fine … till suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent to users that must NOT have obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I desperately attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were responsible. Yet this explanation really did not make any feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely undesirable and simply really did not benefit my business. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows involved excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in totally different sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of total, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag featured costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Nested Folders
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the economical rate for access to so many features. But I quickly discovered this low-cost base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send an email through their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices plunge almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting technique, I might barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Nested Folders.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only point I could think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant mistake. The cons substantially outweighed any type of benefits.
No software application is ideal, but the sheer volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to deal with crucial functions capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application usually obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life simpler, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues damages trust.
- Look for objective reviews. Happy support evaluates indicate less if excessive problems imply bad general use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can completely meet every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements generally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I learned to be extra unconvinced of “also good to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the appeal of glossy new things. The tools you utilize daily need to make depend on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.