As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to improve procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Reputation Management.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a desire happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and failing) to change to this preferred new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, ideally you can gain from my excruciating mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business maintain their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing client connections through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically attractive for businesses looking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with minimal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your company … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a few more stress led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech framework from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of just several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling lost efficiency during the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a huge error. The problems began piling up quickly, until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned 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 sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, managing membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 totally unnecessary emails had been sent out to users that must NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I frantically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, given that the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was totally undesirable and just really did not benefit my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low price tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Reputation Management
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the inexpensive price for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I promptly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every single time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plunge virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing technique, I can barely push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Reputation Management.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had horrible interaction. The only point I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big error. The cons substantially outweighed any benefits.
No software program is ideal, yet the large volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle critical features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software application frequently obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life less complicated, not much more difficult and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems destroys depend on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Delighted support examines suggest less if excessive concerns indicate bad total functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can completely meet every distinct organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step enhancements usually surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be extra unconvinced of “too great to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you use daily must make count on through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.