As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software application and automation to simplify operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Your Card Has Been Declined.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, ideally you can gain from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
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 relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it managed everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses maintain their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and supporting consumer connections through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially appealing for companies seeking to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked accurately with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will change your company … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a few more disappointments led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew changing systems was going to need migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire technology infrastructure from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– not to mention dealing with shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big error. The issues began accumulating promptly, till it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent to users who ought to NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I anxiously tried fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. However the problem persisted.
When I desperately connected to their support team, they vaguely asserted “server problems” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any type of sense, given that the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely inappropriate and just really did not work for my company. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, specific, and item setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Your Card Has Been Declined
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the budget friendly cost for access to numerous features. Yet I rapidly discovered this low-cost base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates drop nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting method, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Your Card Has Been Declined.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had awful involvement. The only point I could believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden fees, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant blunder. The cons substantially outweighed any advantages.
No software is ideal, however the sheer quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to deal with vital features effectively or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software application often obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life simpler, not extra difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys trust.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Pleased support reviews mean much less if too much issues indicate poor total use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can perfectly fulfill every unique company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be much more hesitant of “as well good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The tools you utilize daily should earn count on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.