As a company proprietor for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to improve operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my interest Is GoHighLevel Easy To Learn.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a dream come true on paper. That wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this popular new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my agonizing blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small businesses keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers get the ideal messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites forms to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting customer partnerships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for services looking to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned accurately with very little fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your business … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction points that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a couple of more stress led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole tech infrastructure from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling shed performance during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge error. The concerns started accumulating quickly, up until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, handling membership expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unnecessary emails had been sent to individuals that need to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, given that the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally inappropriate and simply really did not work for my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Is GoHighLevel Easy To Learn
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the budget friendly cost for access to numerous features. However I promptly discovered this economical base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core performance. Instantly my charge card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates drop nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending practices or attempted every fixing method, I might barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Is GoHighLevel Easy To Learn.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful engagement. The only point I can believe that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any advantages.
No software is ideal, but the large quantity of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of essential functions competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software typically obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life easier, not a lot more complex and untidy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys trust.
- Seek objective evaluations. Delighted assistance reviews suggest much less if excessive problems indicate poor general functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can flawlessly satisfy every unique organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental renovations normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I discovered to be a lot more unconvinced of “too excellent to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of glossy new items. The tools you use daily need to gain trust via openness and performance, not slick advertising.