As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Spotify.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a dream happened on paper. Who wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this popular new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization requirements, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it handled everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers receive the best messages at the right time. Use web site and social media kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and boost earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client relationships via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for businesses aiming to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it just functioned accurately with very little fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will certainly revolutionize your service … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing points that I would certainly found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few even more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology facilities from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an introduction of simply some of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– and also taking care of shed performance throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large blunder. The problems began piling up promptly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Offered 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 sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … up until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent to customers who ought to NOT have received them. This took place three days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the problem lingered.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. However this description really did not make any type of sense, since the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally inappropriate and just really did not help my organization. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage overall, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item all set for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Spotify
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the inexpensive price for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I promptly discovered this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core functionality. Suddenly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Spotify.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had horrible interaction. The only point I can assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden charges, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a big error. The disadvantages significantly exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is excellent, but the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with critical features capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in hindsight, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program typically covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life less complicated, not more challenging and untidy.
- Openness builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues damages count on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Happy support reviews indicate much less if excessive problems indicate bad total usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No single solution can flawlessly meet every distinct service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step improvements generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I found out to be more unconvinced of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily need to earn trust via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.