As an agency owner for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to enhance operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest What Are The Features of GoHighLevel.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a desire happened theoretically. Who would not desire a single service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, with any luck you can gain from my painful errors and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small businesses keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically attractive for companies seeking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it just functioned dependably with minimal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will change your company … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few even more irritations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching platforms was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an introduction of just several of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– in addition to taking care of shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a huge error. The concerns started piling up promptly, up until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, handling membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be working penalty … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely pointless e-mails had been sent out to users who ought to NOT have received them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals daily.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. But the problem continued.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were responsible. But this description really did not make any type of sense, since the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my company. I have thousands of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage total, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low price tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing What Are The Features of GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the cost effective price for accessibility to many features. However I promptly discovered this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every repairing trick, I could hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks What Are The Features of GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had dreadful engagement. The only point I can believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge mistake. The cons drastically outweighed any type of advantages.
No software program is ideal, however the large volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to take care of critical features effectively or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. But in hindsight, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program often covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life easier, not extra challenging and untidy.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages trust fund.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Pleased assistance reviews suggest much less if too much concerns indicate inadequate overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind company demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental renovations typically outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more hesitant of “as well great to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the appeal of glossy brand-new items. The devices you use daily must gain count on through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.