As a firm owner for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to streamline operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel QuickBooks Integration.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a desire become a reality on paper. Who wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, ideally you can pick up from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it handled whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small businesses keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use website and social networks forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and supporting customer partnerships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for companies seeking to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with marginal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will certainly change your service … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood changing systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire tech facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– as well as dealing with lost performance throughout the switch.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big mistake. The concerns started piling up swiftly, until it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be operating fine … up until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unnecessary emails had been sent to users that need to NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the problem persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were responsible. However this explanation didn’t make any feeling, because the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was completely unacceptable and just didn’t help my company. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows entailed digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle overall, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low price tag featured pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel QuickBooks Integration
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the inexpensive rate for accessibility to so many features. But I swiftly discovered this cheap base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core capability. Suddenly my charge card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates drop virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting technique, I could hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel QuickBooks Integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible interaction. The only point I might think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial blunder. The cons considerably exceeded any advantages.
No software is ideal, but the sheer volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of critical features effectively or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. But in knowledge, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application usually covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life less complicated, not much more challenging and messy.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages count on.
- Seek objective evaluations. Satisfied assistance reviews imply less if excessive concerns indicate inadequate total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly fulfill every one-of-a-kind company requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements normally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “too great to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny new objects. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn trust fund with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.