As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to streamline procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel on iPad.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a desire come true theoretically. That would not desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, hopefully you can gain from my excruciating mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing consumer connections via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially appealing for businesses seeking to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your business … The turf usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a couple of even more irritations led me to assume perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech framework from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of simply a few of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– in addition to handling shed efficiency throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a big error. The problems started accumulating quickly, till it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I encountered.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event tips, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent to individuals who must NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the trouble lingered.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they vaguely asserted “server problems” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any sense, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely undesirable and just really did not help my service. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows included excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item all set for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low cost tag included expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel on iPad
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the affordable price for access to so many features. However I promptly learned this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates drop practically over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel on iPad.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only thing I can think that would certainly be triggering 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 issues, hidden charges, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a massive error. The cons dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, but the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage essential features competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in hindsight, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software typically covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your job life less complicated, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins count on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Satisfied support reviews indicate less if too much issues imply inadequate total use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can completely fulfill every one-of-a-kind business requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step renovations generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more cynical of “also great to be true” marketing claims and much less lured by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you use daily need to earn trust fund via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.