As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to improve procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Pipeline.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a desire become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, with any luck you can gain from my excruciating errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use site and social media kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it just worked reliably with minimal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your organization … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a couple of even more aggravations led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching over systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech framework from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of just several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to taking care of lost productivity during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting service for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a big blunder. The issues began accumulating quickly, till it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Protection Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be operating penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent out to customers who need to NOT have obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically tried repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. But the problem persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server problems” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, because the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally unacceptable and simply really did not help my service. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Pipeline
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the budget friendly price for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I rapidly learned this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core performance. All of a sudden my credit card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged every time you send an email with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates plunge practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every repairing trick, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Pipeline.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had horrible interaction. The only thing I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial error. The cons dramatically exceeded any benefits.
No software application is best, yet the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage crucial features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around new software application frequently obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life less complicated, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins count on.
- Seek objective reviews. Delighted assistance examines mean less if excessive concerns indicate poor general usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary solution can flawlessly fulfill every distinct service requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements usually surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I found out to be much more hesitant of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you utilize daily ought to earn trust with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.