As an agency owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Restaurant Snapshot.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my company, it seemed like a desire become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, ideally you can pick up from my agonizing blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Use web site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and supporting consumer connections through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly appealing for businesses seeking to combine their technology pile.
Essentially, it just worked accurately with marginal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will transform your company … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few even more frustrations led me to think possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was going to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech infrastructure from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of just several of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention taking care of lost performance during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term solution for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a large error. The problems began piling up quickly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, managing subscription expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … till unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent to individuals that need to NOT have obtained them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the problem lingered.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they slightly declared “web server problems” were at fault. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, given that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally undesirable and simply didn’t help my organization. I have countless get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of total, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag featured pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Restaurant Snapshot
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the budget friendly rate for access to many features. However I promptly learned this inexpensive base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged every time you send an email through their web servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I might barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Restaurant Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only point I could assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden costs, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a substantial mistake. The cons substantially exceeded any benefits.
No software is best, however the large volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to deal with important functions effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application commonly covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life less complicated, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs count on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins trust.
- Seek objective evaluations. Delighted assistance evaluates suggest less if excessive issues suggest bad total functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary remedy can completely satisfy every distinct company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental improvements commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “too great to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less tempted by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you utilize daily ought to make trust fund with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.