As a firm proprietor for over a years, I count on software program and automation to streamline operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my focus Is GoHighLevel a SaaS Platform.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a desire come to life theoretically. Who would not want a single service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically appealing for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will transform your organization … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a couple of more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood changing systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech infrastructure from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of just several of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling lost productivity throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a big error. The problems started accumulating promptly, till it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, taking care of membership expirations and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be working penalty … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to customers that need to NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the problem lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they slightly claimed “web server issues” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any sense, given that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally inappropriate and just didn’t help my company. I have thousands of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of total, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag featured pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Is GoHighLevel a SaaS Platform
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the affordable price for access to a lot of features. But I swiftly learned this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic costs for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices drop practically over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a worthless 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every troubleshooting method, I can hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Is GoHighLevel a SaaS Platform.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had awful interaction. The only point I might believe that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden charges, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big blunder. The cons dramatically surpassed any advantages.
No software is perfect, yet the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to deal with vital features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around new software application frequently covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life simpler, not extra complex and untidy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins depend on.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Delighted assistance assesses imply less if excessive concerns suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can perfectly satisfy every special company need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental renovations commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In short, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “as well great to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the allure of glossy new objects. The tools you utilize daily need to gain depend on with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.