As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to streamline operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my focus GoHighLevel Project Management.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As a business owner always looking to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a desire become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, hopefully you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and clients get the right messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and supporting consumer connections with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically attractive for companies seeking to settle their technology stack.
Generally, it just worked dependably with very little fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “shiny object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a new tool that will reinvent your business … The yard typically looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, but a few even more stress led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew changing systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of just some of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of shed productivity throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-term option for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large blunder. The problems started piling up swiftly, till it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion pointers, handling subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely pointless emails had been sent out to customers who must NOT have actually received them. This happened 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the issue lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation really did not make any feeling, because the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complex.
Basic tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Project Management
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the affordable rate for access to numerous features. But I rapidly learned this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core capability. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send an email via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing trick, I might hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Project Management.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had awful interaction. The only point I might assume that would be triggering 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 crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, broken features, and horrible interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big mistake. The cons drastically exceeded any advantages.
No software application is ideal, however the large volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to manage important functions effectively or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software usually obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life simpler, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Openness builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages depend on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Pleased support assesses mean much less if extreme problems indicate inadequate total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly satisfy every unique company need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental renovations generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I discovered to be more unconvinced of “as well great to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily must earn depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.