As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Notifications.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a dream happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist local business keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients receive the right messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and supporting consumer connections through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for services seeking to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with very little hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the siren call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will change your company … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a few even more disappointments led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood switching systems was going to call for moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire tech framework from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of simply several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– not to mention dealing with lost efficiency throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a big mistake. The concerns began piling up quickly, till it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion reminders, taking care of membership expirations and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be working penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to find 171 completely pointless emails had actually been sent out to customers that ought to NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the issue continued.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server problems” were to blame. But this description really did not make any feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely inappropriate and simply really did not work for my organization. I have thousands of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Simple jobs like editing workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of general, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag included pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Notifications
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the inexpensive cost for access to numerous features. However I rapidly learned this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open prices plunge nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending out methods or tried every fixing method, I might barely push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Notifications.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had horrible involvement. The only point I can believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The cons significantly surpassed any advantages.
No software application is ideal, but the large quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to handle important functions capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program commonly obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life easier, not much more complicated and untidy.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages trust.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Satisfied support examines indicate less if excessive problems suggest poor total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can perfectly fulfill every special organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step improvements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “too excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily must make count on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.