As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to simplify procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Onboarding Checklist.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my company, it felt like a desire come to life theoretically. Who would not want a single solution that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, with any luck you can gain from my unpleasant mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it handled whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients receive the best messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically attractive for businesses aiming to settle their technology stack.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with very little fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a new tool that will change your business … The yard frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction points that I ‘d learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a few even more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew switching over systems was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an introduction of just some of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention taking care of lost performance during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big mistake. The concerns started accumulating quickly, till it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, managing membership expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely pointless emails had been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I hysterically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. But the issue persisted.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any feeling, since the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally undesirable and just didn’t benefit my business. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle total, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Onboarding Checklist
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the economical rate for access to so many features. However I promptly learned this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged whenever you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plunge almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending practices or attempted every repairing method, I could hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Onboarding Checklist.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had awful involvement. The only thing I can think that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, broken features, and terrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge mistake. The cons dramatically outweighed any advantages.
No software program is best, yet the large quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with important features competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. But in hindsight, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your work life less complicated, not much more complicated and messy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys count on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Satisfied assistance reviews indicate less if excessive concerns imply inadequate overall usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary service can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step renovations commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be extra doubtful of “too excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the allure of glossy new items. The tools you make use of daily must earn count on through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.