As a company owner for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to streamline procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my interest What Is The Purpose of GoHighLevel.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a dream come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, ideally you can learn from my agonizing errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting customer relationships with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially appealing for services wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with minimal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren call of “glossy object syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your company … The turf usually looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a couple of even more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire tech infrastructure from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– as well as taking care of lost efficiency during the switch.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large error. The issues began accumulating promptly, till it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … till suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent to users that need to NOT have obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the issue lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any sense, given that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely unacceptable and just really did not work for my service. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the small cost tag included costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing What Is The Purpose of GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the economical cost for accessibility to so many features. Yet I quickly discovered this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open prices plummet virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every repairing technique, I might barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards What Is The Purpose of GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had horrible engagement. The only thing I could believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a significant mistake. The cons substantially outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software is best, but the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage vital functions effectively or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application often obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life less complicated, not extra difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages depend on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Happy support examines imply much less if excessive issues indicate poor overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can perfectly fulfill every distinct company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step improvements typically exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be extra skeptical of “also excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the allure of shiny new objects. The devices you use daily must make depend on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.