As a company owner for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to enhance operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my interest How To Use GoHighLevel To Make Money.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a desire become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service demands, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing client partnerships via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for services looking to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with very little fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will certainly revolutionize your business … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a few even more irritations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching over platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech facilities from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an overview of just some of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling lost efficiency throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge mistake. The problems began accumulating swiftly, till it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, handling membership expirations and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 completely unimportant e-mails had been sent out to customers who ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the trouble continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any type of feeling, since the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely undesirable and just really did not help my organization. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows involved digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the affordable price tag included pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing How To Use GoHighLevel To Make Money
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the cost effective cost for accessibility to numerous features. However I promptly learned this economical base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic costs for core performance. Instantly my bank card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged whenever you send an email with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open rates plummet nearly over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting method, I can hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks How To Use GoHighLevel To Make Money.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had terrible engagement. The only point I might assume that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, busted features, and awful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big blunder. The cons substantially surpassed any advantages.
No software application is excellent, but the sheer quantity of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage critical functions properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. But in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software application usually covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life simpler, not more complex and untidy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys depend on.
- Seek honest reviews. Pleased support assesses mean less if extreme issues indicate bad general use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can perfectly meet every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I found out to be a lot more cynical of “too good to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The devices you make use of daily need to make trust fund through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.