As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to improve procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest Is GoHighLevel a Public Company.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a desire happened on paper. That would not desire a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization requirements, with any luck you can gain from my agonizing mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small businesses maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and customers obtain the right messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and supporting customer relationships through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially attractive for companies seeking to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with minimal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will change your business … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a couple of more disappointments led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole technology infrastructure from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing 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 setup job transitioning everything over– as well as managing shed productivity during the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a better long-term remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge error. The concerns began accumulating quickly, till it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, taking care of membership expirations and much more.
Whatever seemed to be working fine … until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I woke up to find 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had been sent out to customers who should NOT have actually received them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted repairing and restoring the automation from square one. However the issue continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly declared “web server problems” were responsible. But this description didn’t make any kind of sense, because the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my service. I have thousands of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Basic jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in completely various areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle general, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing Is GoHighLevel a Public Company
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the inexpensive cost for access to numerous features. But I swiftly discovered this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to numerous bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open prices drop almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I could barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria Is GoHighLevel a Public Company.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only thing I could think that would be creating 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 charges, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant blunder. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any type of advantages.
No software is excellent, yet the large quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle essential functions properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. However in hindsight, it instructed me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software program commonly covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life less complicated, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins count on.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Delighted support evaluates mean less if too much problems suggest inadequate general use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can completely meet every one-of-a-kind company need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental renovations normally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Basically, I discovered to be extra hesitant of “as well great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny new things. The devices you use daily must make trust via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.