As a company owner for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my attention How To Migrate Your Online Course From Kajabi To GoHighLevel.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my service, it appeared like a dream come to life theoretically. Who would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, with any luck you can learn from my uncomfortable blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small companies keep their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media sites forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and supporting client partnerships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically appealing for businesses seeking to consolidate their technology stack.
Generally, it simply worked dependably with minimal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will certainly reinvent your business … The yard usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a couple of even more frustrations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized changing systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole technology facilities from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply some of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– not to mention handling lost productivity throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large error. The issues started piling up rapidly, up until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Protection Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, managing subscription expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent to users who must NOT have received them. This took place three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the trouble persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, given that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not help my organization. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows included excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage total, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the small cost tag featured pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing How To Migrate Your Online Course From Kajabi To GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the economical price for access to a lot of features. However I promptly learned this low-cost base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices drop almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting method, I can barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria How To Migrate Your Online Course From Kajabi To GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had dreadful interaction. The only point I might think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden fees, busted features, and awful interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge mistake. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any benefits.
No software application is best, but the large volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital features properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program typically covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your job life simpler, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek objective testimonials. Pleased assistance examines imply much less if extreme problems imply inadequate overall usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single solution can completely meet every distinct company requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements commonly surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Simply put, I learned to be a lot more skeptical of “also excellent to be true” marketing claims and much less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily ought to make trust fund with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.