As a firm owner for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to streamline procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my interest How To Host Clients Website with GoHighLevel.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a dream come true on paper. Who would not want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization requirements, hopefully you can gain from my excruciating errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small businesses keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing client connections through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly attractive for organizations wanting to settle their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply worked accurately with marginal hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny things disorder”. You know the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will transform your organization … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a couple of even more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching over systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole technology facilities from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to dealing with lost performance during the button.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a much better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a huge error. The problems began piling up promptly, till it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent out to customers that should NOT have actually received them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the problem persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. However this description really did not make any feeling, since the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my organization. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Basic tasks like editing workflows included excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low price tag came with costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing How To Host Clients Website with GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the affordable cost for accessibility to so many features. Yet I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed whenever you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open prices plummet almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting technique, I could barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards How To Host Clients Website with GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only point I can think that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and awful interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge blunder. The cons dramatically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, but the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with vital features effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. But in knowledge, it showed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software application commonly obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life less complicated, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Pleased assistance assesses mean much less if excessive issues suggest poor general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind company demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements commonly outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I learned to be extra skeptical of “as well great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The devices you use daily need to gain count on through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.