As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel WhatsApp Integration.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a dream come to life theoretically. Who would not want a single service that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, ideally you can learn from my painful blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist local business keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients get the right messages at the right time. Usage site and social networks kinds to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client relationships with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially attractive for companies seeking to combine their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will change your service … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a couple of even more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology framework from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of simply several of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling shed performance throughout the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big blunder. The problems started piling up quickly, up until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Security Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, taking care of membership expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be functioning fine … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely pointless emails had been sent to customers that should NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the issue continued.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any type of feeling, because the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally undesirable and just really did not benefit my business. I have thousands of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel WhatsApp Integration
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the economical price for access to numerous features. However I swiftly learned this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates drop almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every troubleshooting method, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel WhatsApp Integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only point I can assume that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed charges, busted features, and horrible interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant error. The cons considerably exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, but the sheer quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial features properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software typically obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life less complicated, not a lot more challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues damages trust.
- Seek impartial reviews. Delighted assistance assesses imply less if too much issues indicate poor overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind company requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In short, I discovered to be much more hesitant of “also great to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the appeal of glossy new things. The tools you use daily should make trust via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.