As a firm owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to improve procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel Reseller.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a dream come true on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this preferred new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service demands, with any luck you can learn from my uncomfortable blunders and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small businesses keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the right time. Usage web site and social networks kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed consumer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing client relationships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly attractive for businesses aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy things disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s discussing a brand-new device that will revolutionize your service … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize rubbing points that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a few more disappointments led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching platforms was going to require moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole technology facilities from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an overview of just some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing lost efficiency during 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 far better long-lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge error. The concerns started accumulating swiftly, till it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I ran into.
Protection Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, managing membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely unnecessary emails had been sent out to users that must NOT have gotten them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I desperately attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the trouble lingered.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they slightly declared “server concerns” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally undesirable and just didn’t work for my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complex.
Simple tasks like editing workflows entailed digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low price tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Reseller
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the affordable rate for accessibility to a lot of features. But I rapidly discovered this cheap base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open prices drop practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting technique, I can barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Reseller.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible involvement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive error. The cons significantly outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software program is best, however the large quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial functions competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application usually obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices must make your work life simpler, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys count on.
- Look for objective reviews. Pleased support evaluates indicate much less if excessive concerns suggest poor overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly meet every distinct service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental renovations typically surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I learned to be more cynical of “too great to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the attraction of shiny brand-new items. The devices you utilize daily ought to gain trust fund with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.