As a company proprietor for over a years, I depend on software application and automation to simplify operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest Pabbly GoHighLevel.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a dream become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, with any luck you can gain from my unpleasant errors and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task management alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Use website and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and supporting customer relationships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly attractive for businesses aiming to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your service … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction points that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a few more disappointments led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew changing systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech framework from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a review of just some of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention dealing with lost efficiency throughout the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-term solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a large blunder. The issues began piling up quickly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely pointless e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. But the issue lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely inappropriate and just didn’t help my service. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like editing workflows involved excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different sections. Moving between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, private, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the small cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Pabbly GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the cost effective cost for access to a lot of features. Yet I promptly discovered this economical base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices drop nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every repairing technique, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks Pabbly GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible involvement. The only thing I might assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and terrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant mistake. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any benefits.
No software is excellent, however the sheer quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with essential features competently or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software program often covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life easier, not a lot more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust fund.
- Look for honest reviews. Delighted support reviews mean less if too much problems suggest inadequate total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can completely meet every distinct organization requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step renovations typically outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In other words, I learned to be extra skeptical of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you use daily should make trust through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.