As an agency owner for over a years, I rely on software and automation to enhance operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Referral Program.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a dream come true theoretically. Who would not want a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing errors and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client administration and automation demands.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically appealing for companies wanting to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned accurately with marginal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will change your business … The lawn typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of simply several of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– in addition to managing shed productivity throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a big error. The problems started piling up rapidly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, managing membership expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be operating penalty … till unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely pointless emails had actually been sent out to users that must NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the issue persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, given that the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely undesirable and just didn’t help my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Referral Program
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the cost effective cost for accessibility to many features. But I swiftly discovered this affordable base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core capability. Instantly my credit card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged every single time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates drop practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every repairing trick, I can hardly nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Referral Program.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had horrible engagement. The only thing I could assume that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big error. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is ideal, but the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of vital functions properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. However in hindsight, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life easier, not extra challenging and messy.
- Transparency develops depend on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Satisfied support assesses suggest much less if excessive concerns imply bad general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind business need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be much more hesitant of “too excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the allure of shiny new things. The tools you use daily need to make count on with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.