As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to improve procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel Workflow AI Assistant.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire become a reality on paper. That would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this preferred new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, with any luck you can learn from my uncomfortable blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it managed whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the right time. Use website and social media sites forms to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations aiming to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with marginal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will reinvent your service … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, yet a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech infrastructure from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of just several of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of shed productivity during the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge blunder. The problems began accumulating quickly, up until it got to a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, managing membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals that need to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. However the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, since the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t help my business. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in completely various areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of overall, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low cost tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Workflow AI Assistant
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to so many features. But I quickly discovered this inexpensive base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an email via their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to numerous dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every fixing method, I could barely push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Workflow AI Assistant.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only point I might assume that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden charges, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial error. The cons drastically exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software program is perfect, yet the large quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle crucial functions capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in knowledge, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application usually obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life less complicated, not more complicated and untidy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins count on.
- Look for honest reviews. Satisfied support assesses indicate less if excessive concerns suggest inadequate general use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can completely fulfill every special business demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step renovations normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be a lot more hesitant of “as well excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The tools you use daily need to gain trust fund through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.