As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to streamline operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Workflows.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a desire come true theoretically. Who would not desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, ideally you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses maintain their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use web site and social media forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing customer connections with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations seeking to consolidate their tech pile.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with marginal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s discussing a new tool that will revolutionize your business … The yard typically looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a couple of more stress led me to think possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire tech facilities from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– and also dealing with shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a big mistake. The concerns started piling up swiftly, till it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be working penalty … till instantly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent out to customers that need to NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the problem persisted.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were to blame. However this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely undesirable and just really did not work for my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, specific, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag featured pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Workflows
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the economical cost for access to many features. But I rapidly discovered this inexpensive base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic fees for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every repairing technique, I might hardly nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Workflows.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had horrible involvement. The only thing I can believe that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big mistake. The disadvantages significantly exceeded any benefits.
No software application is excellent, however the sheer volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital functions effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. But in knowledge, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software program often covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life much easier, not much more complex and untidy.
- Transparency builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Satisfied support reviews suggest much less if too much problems imply bad overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind service need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step renovations generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I learned to be more unconvinced of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily need to earn trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.