As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to improve operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel SaaS Digimark London.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a desire come true theoretically. Who would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, with any luck you can pick up from my agonizing blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help local business maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers obtain the right messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting client relationships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for businesses aiming to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with minimal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your business … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could reduce friction points that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a couple of even more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology framework from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of just several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– not to mention taking care of lost efficiency throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better long-lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge error. The issues began piling up promptly, up until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Given 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 consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, handling membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … till suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely pointless e-mails had been sent to customers who ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t help my organization. I have hundreds of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag featured pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel SaaS Digimark London
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the budget friendly price for accessibility to so many features. However I swiftly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open rates plummet practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every repairing method, I might barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel SaaS Digimark London.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only thing I could assume that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and awful user interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial error. The cons drastically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, however the sheer volume of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of important functions capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in knowledge, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software often obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life easier, not more difficult and untidy.
- Openness constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins trust.
- Seek impartial reviews. Delighted assistance reviews mean less if excessive issues indicate inadequate overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single solution can flawlessly meet every distinct service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental improvements usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra hesitant of “also great to be true” marketing claims and much less tempted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The tools you use daily need to gain trust fund through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.