As a firm proprietor for over a years, I depend on software and automation to simplify procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Webinar.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, ideally you can gain from my painful mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the right time. Use web site and social media forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and boost profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing consumer partnerships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly attractive for organizations seeking to combine their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply worked reliably with very little fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your organization … The turf typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a few more aggravations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching platforms was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my whole technology infrastructure from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of just some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– as well as handling lost efficiency throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge error. The problems began piling up swiftly, until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing subscription expirations and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to individuals who must NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days straight, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the problem persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were responsible. But this description really did not make any type of sense, because the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally undesirable and simply didn’t benefit my organization. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various areas. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage overall, individual, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag featured pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Webinar
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the cost effective cost for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I promptly learned this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core capability. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed each time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open rates plunge practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every fixing trick, I might hardly push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Webinar.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible engagement. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any benefits.
No software application is best, but the sheer volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to take care of crucial features effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software application usually covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life much easier, not extra challenging and untidy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins trust.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Delighted support reviews mean much less if extreme issues suggest inadequate overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly meet every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental renovations typically outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be much more unconvinced of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily should earn trust fund via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.