As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to simplify operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Personal Booking Calendar.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a dream become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service demands, ideally you can learn from my excruciating mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses keep their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Use website and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and boost income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting client partnerships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially attractive for companies aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new device that will certainly transform your organization … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a few even more frustrations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an introduction of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– and also managing shed performance throughout the button.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel providing a better long-lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a big blunder. The issues began piling up swiftly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
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 included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, managing membership expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be working penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to users who ought to NOT have actually received them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the issue persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were at fault. Yet this description really did not make any type of sense, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was totally unacceptable and simply really did not work for my organization. I have thousands of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Simple jobs like editing workflows included digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage total, private, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low price tag came with expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Personal Booking Calendar
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the budget friendly price for access to many features. Yet I promptly learned this low-cost base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, however simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plunge nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting method, I might hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Personal Booking Calendar.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had terrible interaction. The only point I might think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden charges, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge mistake. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any type of benefits.
No software application is ideal, yet the large volume of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with essential features effectively or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. But in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program usually obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not extra complex and untidy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys count on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Delighted support examines indicate much less if excessive concerns indicate poor general functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can completely fulfill every special company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements typically exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I learned to be a lot more unconvinced of “too good to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny new things. The devices you use daily must make trust fund via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.