As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my interest Make Money with GoHighLevel.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my company, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. Who would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting consumer relationships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially eye-catching for companies looking to consolidate their technology stack.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny things disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will reinvent your business … The lawn commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a couple of more disappointments led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I recognized switching over platforms was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole technology infrastructure from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an introduction of simply a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of lost performance during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large error. The concerns started piling up rapidly, until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, managing membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to customers that should NOT have received them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. But the issue persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “server issues” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, given that the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally inappropriate and just didn’t work for my organization. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing Make Money with GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the economical price for accessibility to so many features. But I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic costs for core functionality. Instantly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I could hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks Make Money with GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had terrible engagement. The only point I can believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed charges, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge blunder. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any type of advantages.
No software program is ideal, but the large volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with essential functions properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. However in knowledge, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software usually covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life less complicated, not much more complicated and messy.
- Openness builds depend on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins trust.
- Seek impartial reviews. Pleased assistance assesses suggest less if too much issues suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single remedy can completely fulfill every distinct service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental renovations usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I found out to be more unconvinced of “as well excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you use daily must earn count on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.