As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel VoIP integration.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my company, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a single remedy that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing blunders and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I found Keap intuitive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the best messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing consumer connections via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically appealing for companies aiming to settle their technology stack.
Essentially, it just functioned dependably with very little hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s discussing a new tool that will certainly transform your service … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a few even more stress led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire tech facilities from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an overview of just some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to taking care of shed productivity during the button.
However ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The concerns started accumulating rapidly, till it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided 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 new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating penalty … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unimportant emails had actually been sent to customers who ought to NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem continued.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “server issues” were to blame. However this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unstable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Basic jobs like editing workflows involved excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to manage total, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the affordable price tag included pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel VoIP integration
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for access to a lot of features. Yet I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plummet almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel VoIP integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I can think that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big blunder. The cons substantially outweighed any advantages.
No software application is best, yet the sheer quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with important features capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program often obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life less complicated, not a lot more difficult and untidy.
- Openness constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins count on.
- Look for objective evaluations. Delighted support reviews imply less if extreme issues imply bad overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can completely satisfy every unique company need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental enhancements usually surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In short, I learned to be a lot more cynical of “too good to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily must earn trust with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.