As a company owner for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to simplify procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Niches.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. That would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my painful mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the best messages at the correct time. Usage site and social media sites kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially eye-catching for services wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with very little hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a new device that will certainly change your service … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a couple of even more aggravations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire technology facilities from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention dealing with lost performance throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a huge error. The problems began accumulating promptly, till it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning penalty … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to customers who should NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously tried fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. But the problem lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely undesirable and simply really did not benefit my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these issues …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, private, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Niches
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the budget friendly cost for accessibility to many features. However I promptly discovered this cheap base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic fees for core functionality. Suddenly my credit card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out methods or tried every repairing trick, I could hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Niches.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had awful involvement. The only thing I might believe that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant blunder. The cons substantially surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, however the sheer quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with important features effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard 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 picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in knowledge, it educated me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program frequently covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your job life much easier, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust fund.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Happy support examines imply less if extreme problems imply inadequate general usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary option can perfectly fulfill every special organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step enhancements commonly outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I learned to be extra unconvinced of “as well great to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The tools you utilize daily should gain count on through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.