As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to streamline operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel WordPress Hosting.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my service, it looked like a dream happened theoretically. That would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that 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 need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies maintain their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage web site and social networks forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships through effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially appealing for companies aiming to settle their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply worked dependably with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will certainly revolutionize your business … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a couple of more frustrations led me to assume possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew changing systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire technology framework from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely 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 dealing with lost efficiency during the button.
However ultimately, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-term service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big error. The problems started accumulating quickly, till it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, handling subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely pointless emails had been sent to customers that must NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the trouble continued.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they vaguely declared “server problems” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, because the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was completely unacceptable and simply really did not work for my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle total, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel WordPress Hosting
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the inexpensive price for accessibility to many features. But I quickly learned this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core functionality. Instantly my bank card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send an email via their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open prices drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out practices or attempted every repairing trick, I can hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel WordPress Hosting.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had terrible interaction. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, busted features, and horrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant blunder. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, but the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle important functions effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. But in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software frequently obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life much easier, not extra complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages trust fund.
- Look for objective evaluations. Delighted support evaluates indicate less if excessive problems indicate poor total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can completely fulfill every special organization requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step renovations normally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I found out to be more doubtful of “as well great to be true” marketing cases and less lured by the attraction of glossy new items. The tools you utilize daily must earn trust via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.