As a firm proprietor for over a years, I count on software and automation to enhance operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest How To Make Money with GoHighLevel.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always looking to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a dream come to life theoretically. Who would not desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it handled everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Usage site and social media sites types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer relationships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially appealing for businesses seeking to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with very little fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “glossy item syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s discussing a new tool that will transform your business … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower friction factors that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, but a few even more aggravations led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was going to require moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of simply some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– and also dealing with lost performance throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting service for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge blunder. The concerns started piling up swiftly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, managing membership expirations and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be functioning fine … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had been sent out to users that ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the problem persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any type of feeling, since the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally unacceptable and just didn’t help my organization. I have hundreds of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows involved digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low price tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing How To Make Money with GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for access to numerous features. Yet I swiftly learned this affordable base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core capability. Suddenly my credit card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open rates plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I can hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks How To Make Money with GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only thing I could think that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, busted features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial error. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any type of advantages.
No software is excellent, yet the large quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to handle vital features capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software commonly obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life simpler, not extra challenging and messy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages trust.
- Seek honest evaluations. Happy assistance examines indicate much less if extreme problems imply inadequate total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step enhancements normally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be more hesitant of “as well good to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The tools you utilize daily should make count on via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.