As a firm owner for over a years, I depend on software and automation to improve procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Reputation Management Snapshot.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a dream come to life theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it handled everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers obtain the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing consumer connections via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically attractive for organizations aiming to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will revolutionize your organization … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a few more irritations led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology facilities from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of simply a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– and also dealing with lost performance throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a huge error. The concerns began piling up promptly, till it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, managing membership expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely pointless e-mails had actually been sent to individuals who need to NOT have gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the issue lingered.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were to blame. However this description really did not make any type of sense, since the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally undesirable and just didn’t benefit my business. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Simple tasks like editing workflows involved digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage general, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low price tag came with expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Reputation Management Snapshot
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the economical cost for access to numerous features. However I promptly learned this inexpensive base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices drop nearly over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending out practices or tried every fixing method, I might barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Reputation Management Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had awful involvement. The only point I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a massive error. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any advantages.
No software is ideal, yet the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle critical functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software usually covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your job life simpler, not a lot more challenging and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops count on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Happy support evaluates indicate less if too much concerns suggest bad general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can flawlessly fulfill every unique company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental renovations commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I learned to be extra doubtful of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of glossy new things. The devices you use daily need to gain depend on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.