As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to simplify operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighLevel Reporting and Analytics.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a dream happened theoretically. Who would not desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this preferred new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, hopefully you can gain from my painful errors and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers receive the best messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social networks kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially attractive for organizations seeking to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly change your company … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, yet a couple of even more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew changing systems was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling shed productivity during the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge error. The concerns started piling up swiftly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion reminders, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent to customers that ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the issue persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server concerns” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was completely inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my business. I have thousands of calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Simple jobs like editing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag included pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Reporting and Analytics
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the inexpensive cost for access to so many features. But I promptly discovered this cheap base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core functionality. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send an email through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices plunge virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I can hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Reporting and Analytics.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had dreadful engagement. The only point I could assume that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed charges, broken features, and awful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a big mistake. The cons considerably exceeded any type of benefits.
No software program is ideal, but the sheer volume of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with vital features properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program commonly obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life easier, not more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins trust.
- Seek honest testimonials. Pleased support evaluates imply much less if extreme concerns indicate poor total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can completely meet every distinct company requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental improvements normally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be much more cynical of “also great to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less tempted by the attraction of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily should gain trust fund through openness and performance, not slick advertising.