As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to streamline procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel Snapshots For Sale.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my company, it seemed like a dream come to life theoretically. That would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization requirements, with any luck you can learn from my uncomfortable mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation requirements.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the best messages at the right time. Usage site and social media kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client relationships through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly eye-catching for businesses aiming to combine their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with very little hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will revolutionize your service … The lawn commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a couple of even more frustrations led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole technology facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a summary of just several of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– and also managing lost efficiency during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term option for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a huge mistake. The concerns started piling up promptly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, handling membership expirations and much more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had been sent to users that must NOT have received them. This occurred three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly declared “server issues” were to blame. Yet this explanation didn’t make any sense, since the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was entirely inappropriate and just didn’t work for my business. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and challenging.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in totally various sections. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage total, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Snapshots For Sale
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the cost effective price for access to many features. However I rapidly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core performance. Suddenly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates drop almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every fixing trick, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Snapshots For Sale.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only point I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big mistake. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any benefits.
No software program is ideal, yet the sheer quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle essential features properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. But in knowledge, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around new software commonly covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your work life easier, not extra complex and untidy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins depend on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Happy assistance examines indicate less if excessive issues suggest poor total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can completely fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental renovations commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I discovered to be extra doubtful of “also good to be real” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of shiny new items. The tools you make use of daily ought to gain depend on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.