As a company owner for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to enhance operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel UTM Parameters.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a dream come true theoretically. That would not want a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client administration and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist local business keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the best messages at the right time. Use website and social media sites types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and supporting client connections through effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly attractive for businesses aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren telephone call of “glossy object disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new device that will change your organization … The lawn frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a couple of more disappointments led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized changing systems was going to call for moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology framework from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– as well as dealing with lost performance during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a better long-term solution for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a huge blunder. The problems began piling up quickly, till it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unimportant emails had actually been sent out to individuals who must NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the issue persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any feeling, given that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely undesirable and just really did not work for my organization. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like editing workflows involved excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low price tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel UTM Parameters
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the economical cost for access to so many features. However I promptly discovered this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every time you send an email through their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open prices plunge nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing trick, I might barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel UTM Parameters.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had awful involvement. The only point I could think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden costs, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant blunder. The disadvantages dramatically surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is best, yet the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with vital features competently or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program commonly covers larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not extra challenging and untidy.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Pleased support reviews imply much less if extreme issues suggest bad total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can flawlessly satisfy every unique company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step renovations generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be a lot more skeptical of “as well great to be true” marketing claims and much less tempted by the appeal of glossy new things. The devices you make use of daily must make count on through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.