As a firm proprietor for over a years, I count on software program and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel Xero Integration.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream come true on paper. That would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, ideally you can gain from my painful mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small businesses keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients get the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially attractive for organizations seeking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with marginal hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the feeling: when every person’s talking about a new device that will revolutionize your service … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a few more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an introduction of simply several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention dealing with shed efficiency throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a huge error. The issues started accumulating swiftly, till it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 totally pointless emails had been sent to individuals who must NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I hysterically attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the issue lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any feeling, because the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely unacceptable and just didn’t help my company. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle overall, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low price tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Xero Integration
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the affordable cost for accessibility to numerous features. But I quickly learned this low-cost base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core performance. Instantly my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed every time you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices drop practically over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every repairing trick, I might barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Xero Integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had horrible engagement. The only point I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed fees, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a massive mistake. The cons drastically outweighed any type of advantages.
No software program is best, but the large quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of critical features capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software program frequently covers larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your job life easier, not much more complicated and untidy.
- Openness builds trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues damages trust fund.
- Seek objective reviews. Delighted assistance examines imply much less if extreme concerns indicate inadequate overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step improvements usually exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more cynical of “as well excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily need to make count on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.