As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to streamline procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my focus Top GoHighLevel Affiliates.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and stopping working) to change to this popular new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating errors and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use website and social media sites types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing client relationships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly appealing for companies wanting to settle their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly change your company … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction factors that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a couple of even more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire technology facilities from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an overview of simply several of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing lost efficiency throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a much better lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a big mistake. The concerns began accumulating swiftly, until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, 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 clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to individuals who ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the problem persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server issues” were at fault. But this description really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally unacceptable and simply didn’t help my company. I have hundreds of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complicated.
Easy tasks like editing workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage total, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the affordable price tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Top GoHighLevel Affiliates
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget friendly price for access to a lot of features. Yet I promptly learned this inexpensive base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core performance. Instantly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plunge almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing method, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards Top GoHighLevel Affiliates.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had terrible engagement. The only point I can assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive blunder. The cons dramatically exceeded any type of benefits.
No software program is ideal, but the large quantity of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of important functions effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. But in hindsight, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application frequently obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life easier, not more challenging and untidy.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Delighted assistance examines indicate less if extreme issues indicate inadequate total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can completely meet every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step renovations typically outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I found out to be a lot more doubtful of “as well excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The devices you utilize daily should earn count on with openness and performance, not slick advertising.