As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to streamline operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my attention Is GoHighLevel HIPAA Compliant.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire come to life theoretically. That would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, with any luck you can learn from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies maintain their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and clients receive the best messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing client partnerships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially attractive for organizations looking to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned accurately with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the siren call of “glossy things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your organization … The turf often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few even more disappointments led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew changing systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire tech infrastructure from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– as well as taking care of lost productivity during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a large error. The concerns began piling up swiftly, till it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant emails had been sent out to individuals that should NOT have gotten them. This took place three days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server issues” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any feeling, since the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely undesirable and simply really did not help my organization. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage total, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing Is GoHighLevel HIPAA Compliant
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the affordable cost for accessibility to many features. However I quickly discovered this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core capability. Suddenly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plunge almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I can barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Is GoHighLevel HIPAA Compliant.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had horrible engagement. The only point I could think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden charges, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant error. The cons considerably surpassed any type of benefits.
No software application is ideal, however the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to handle crucial features effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. Yet in knowledge, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software typically covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life simpler, not a lot more challenging and messy.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins depend on.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Delighted assistance examines imply much less if too much issues suggest poor overall functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single service can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental renovations usually exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I learned to be much more doubtful of “as well great to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the attraction of shiny new things. The devices you make use of daily need to earn trust fund via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.