As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to streamline procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel Plumber Snapshot.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a dream become a reality theoretically. That would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social media forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting consumer connections with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically attractive for organizations aiming to combine their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with marginal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your organization … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a few more aggravations led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an introduction of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as dealing with lost efficiency throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-term option for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a large blunder. The issues started piling up promptly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to customers who should NOT have actually obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. But the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they slightly declared “server problems” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, given that the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally unacceptable and just really did not work for my business. I have countless contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like editing workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in completely various areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag included pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Plumber Snapshot
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the affordable price for accessibility to numerous features. However I rapidly discovered this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core functionality. Instantly my charge card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plunge nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I might barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Plumber Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had horrible interaction. The only point I can believe that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big error. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any type of benefits.
No software is perfect, however the sheer quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle crucial functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. But in hindsight, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program typically obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life less complicated, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys count on.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines indicate less if extreme issues indicate poor total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental enhancements usually exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “also good to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the allure of shiny new objects. The tools you use daily must make trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.