As an agency owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to improve operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Text To Pay.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a desire happened on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and failing) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and customers get the right messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 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 offers a comprehensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and supporting consumer relationships with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly eye-catching for businesses aiming to settle their tech stack.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with very little hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your business … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a few more frustrations led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire technology facilities from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an introduction of simply several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention managing shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a big error. The issues started accumulating rapidly, until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be working penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally pointless emails had been sent to users who need to NOT have obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. However the issue lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “server problems” were responsible. But this description really did not make any type of sense, since the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t help my service. I have hundreds of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complex.
Straightforward jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Text To Pay
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the economical cost for accessibility to so many features. But I promptly learned this affordable base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core functionality. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, yet simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open rates plunge almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I can hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Text To Pay.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only point I might assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed fees, broken features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software application is ideal, yet the sheer quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical functions competently or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. However in hindsight, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software program commonly covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life much easier, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins depend on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Delighted support reviews indicate less if too much problems indicate bad general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can flawlessly satisfy every special company need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements usually surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In other words, I discovered to be much more doubtful of “as well excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the attraction of shiny new items. The devices you use daily need to make depend on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.