As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to simplify procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Round Robin.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, ideally you can pick up from my painful mistakes and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small businesses keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media sites types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and boost profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client partnerships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically appealing for organizations looking to combine their tech stack.
Generally, it just worked dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will reinvent your business … The lawn often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction points that I ‘d learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a few even more aggravations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater 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 data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech framework from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of just several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– as well as handling lost performance throughout the button.
However ultimately, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a large blunder. The concerns began accumulating quickly, until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, taking care of membership expirations and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unnecessary emails had actually been sent to users who must NOT have received them. This occurred three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I frantically tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any sense, considering that the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely inappropriate and just really did not help my service. I have thousands of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of general, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag included pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Round Robin
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the affordable cost for accessibility to numerous features. However I rapidly learned this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core performance. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to numerous dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plummet virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending practices or attempted every fixing technique, I could hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Round Robin.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had horrible interaction. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and awful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a massive blunder. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software application is ideal, yet the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle essential features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in hindsight, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program typically covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your job life less complicated, not much more challenging and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages count on.
- Seek unbiased reviews. Pleased assistance examines imply much less if extreme issues indicate inadequate overall usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly meet every one-of-a-kind service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements typically surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I found out to be more doubtful of “too good to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The tools you use daily should gain count on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.