As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to simplify procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my attention How To Sell on GoHighLevel.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a dream come true on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Use website and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and increase revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting customer partnerships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly attractive for businesses wanting to settle their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with minimal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your business … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing points that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few more stress led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology facilities from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of just some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of lost efficiency during the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a large mistake. The problems started piling up rapidly, up until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, managing membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to individuals who need to NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the trouble lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “server problems” were responsible. However this description really did not make any type of feeling, since the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally undesirable and simply really did not benefit my business. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of overall, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing How To Sell on GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the cost effective price for access to many features. Yet I swiftly learned this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core capability. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open prices drop virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every fixing technique, I could hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards How To Sell on GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible involvement. The only point I could 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, hidden fees, broken features, and horrible interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big mistake. The cons significantly exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software is ideal, 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’t trust it to take care of important features competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in knowledge, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software commonly obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life less complicated, not much more challenging and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages trust.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Happy support reviews imply much less if too much problems indicate bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can perfectly fulfill every distinct organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step improvements normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be extra skeptical of “too excellent to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny new objects. The tools you use daily ought to make count on through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.