As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to enhance procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my focus GoHighLevel Quotes.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a dream become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a single solution that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, with any luck you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About 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 actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business maintain their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Use web site and social media forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly attractive for organizations looking to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it just functioned reliably with minimal fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The yard usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– and also handling shed efficiency throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a big blunder. The problems began accumulating quickly, until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, managing membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to customers who should NOT have received them. This took place three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they slightly claimed “web server issues” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, since the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t benefit my organization. I have thousands of calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in totally different sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle total, private, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low cost tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Quotes
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the cost effective price for accessibility to so many features. But I rapidly discovered this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send an email with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates plummet practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting method, I can hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Quotes.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had awful interaction. The only thing I might think that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial error. The cons considerably surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is best, yet the large volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to manage essential features effectively or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software typically covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life much easier, not extra difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness builds depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust.
- Look for objective evaluations. Pleased support evaluates imply much less if too much problems imply inadequate total functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can completely satisfy every special organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental enhancements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I found out to be more doubtful of “as well excellent to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily need to earn trust through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.