As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software program and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Sub Account.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this popular new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and customers get the right messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically eye-catching for companies aiming to combine their tech pile.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with very little difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will transform your service … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a couple of more frustrations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire technology infrastructure from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of simply several of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– and also taking care of shed productivity throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge mistake. The problems began piling up quickly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … till instantly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to individuals that should NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I anxiously tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the trouble persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were responsible. But this description didn’t make any type of sense, considering that the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely undesirable and simply really did not help my business. I have hundreds of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and challenging.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of total, private, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced 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 under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low price tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Sub Account
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the inexpensive rate for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I promptly discovered this cheap base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send an email via their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open prices plummet virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every fixing technique, I could barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Sub Account.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful engagement. The only thing I can believe that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and awful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive blunder. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any benefits.
No software application is best, yet the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to handle crucial functions effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application commonly obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life much easier, not a lot more complex and messy.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust.
- Look for honest evaluations. Happy assistance reviews mean much less if excessive problems suggest poor total usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can flawlessly meet every distinct company need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements generally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I found out to be more unconvinced of “too good to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny new items. The devices you utilize daily should earn count on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.