As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to simplify procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Shopify Integration.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my company, it seemed like a dream happened on paper. That would not want a single service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to switch over to this popular new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and customers receive the right messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting consumer connections via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for businesses aiming to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply worked reliably with marginal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new tool that will transform your organization … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a few more irritations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew changing systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology facilities from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a review of just several of the effort called for:
- Manually 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 invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– in addition to taking care of lost productivity throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large mistake. The issues began piling up promptly, until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, handling subscription expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely pointless e-mails had been sent to users that should NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any feeling, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was totally undesirable and just really did not benefit my service. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally undependable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of general, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag included costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Shopify Integration
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget-friendly rate for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I quickly discovered this affordable base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic fees for core capability. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every single time you send an email with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open prices plunge almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I can barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Shopify Integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had horrible involvement. The only point I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge mistake. The cons significantly exceeded any advantages.
No software is ideal, but the large quantity of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. But in hindsight, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software commonly covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life easier, not a lot more complicated and untidy.
- Transparency builds depend on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages depend on.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Delighted assistance examines suggest less if extreme problems suggest poor general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single remedy can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I discovered to be more doubtful of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The devices you utilize daily ought to make count on with openness and performance, not slick advertising.