As a company owner for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Surveys.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and customers obtain the right messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social networks forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client relationships through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for services wanting to combine their technology stack.
Generally, it just worked reliably with marginal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren call of “shiny things syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will transform your business … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing points that I ‘d learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a few more frustrations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was going to require moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of simply a few of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– not to mention managing lost performance during the switch.
However eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a huge mistake. The problems started piling up quickly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … till suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to customers that should NOT have received them. This happened three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically tried repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. But the trouble persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance group, they slightly declared “web server issues” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, since the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my organization. I have countless get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the small cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Surveys
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the economical cost for accessibility to numerous features. However I quickly discovered this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plummet virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every repairing technique, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Surveys.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a huge mistake. The cons dramatically exceeded any advantages.
No software program is perfect, but the large volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle essential features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application frequently obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your job life simpler, not much more complex and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages count on.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Satisfied support examines imply less if too much issues indicate poor general use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly satisfy every special organization need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements commonly outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Basically, I found out to be much more doubtful of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny new things. The devices you use daily should make trust fund via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.