As a company proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Onboarding Call.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my service, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. Who would not want a single option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this popular new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients get the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social media sites forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and supporting consumer connections via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically attractive for services aiming to settle their technology pile.
Generally, it just worked accurately with very little fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the siren call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will revolutionize your business … The turf frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing points that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a couple of even more frustrations led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole tech framework from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of just some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– not to mention handling lost efficiency during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a big mistake. The issues began accumulating rapidly, up until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … till suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 totally pointless emails had actually been sent out to customers that must NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I anxiously tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly declared “web server problems” were to blame. But this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, considering that the mistakes continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t work for my service. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally undependable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complicated.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows included excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in completely various areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Onboarding Call
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the inexpensive price for accessibility to a lot of features. But I swiftly learned this low-cost base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, yet simply 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 prices plunge virtually over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing trick, I might barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Onboarding Call.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had terrible involvement. The only point I could believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a huge mistake. The cons significantly outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software application is perfect, but the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to handle vital features capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software usually obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life easier, not more difficult and messy.
- Openness constructs count on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages depend on.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Delighted support examines mean less if excessive problems indicate bad general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can flawlessly satisfy every distinct organization requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step renovations usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “as well excellent to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The tools you use daily should gain depend on with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.