As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to simplify operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Steakhouse Playbook.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my company, it seemed like a dream come to life on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it managed whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help local business maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients receive the right messages at the correct time. Usage site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and increase revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing client partnerships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly appealing for organizations aiming to combine their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned reliably with very little hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your company … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing points that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a couple of even more stress led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology facilities from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– in addition to dealing with shed productivity during the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a large blunder. The issues began piling up rapidly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, managing membership expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … till instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have actually received them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the issue persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were at fault. Yet this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely unacceptable and just really did not benefit my business. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complex.
Simple jobs like editing workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the small cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Steakhouse Playbook
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for access to numerous features. But I rapidly learned this inexpensive base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send an email through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices plummet almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting method, I might hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Steakhouse Playbook.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only point I might assume that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant mistake. The cons considerably outweighed any type of benefits.
No software program is best, yet the large quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of essential functions effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software typically covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life much easier, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages trust fund.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Happy support assesses mean less if too much concerns imply bad general functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can completely fulfill every special business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental improvements generally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I discovered to be much more skeptical of “too good to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily need to make trust via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.