As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to improve procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my attention What Are The Disadvantages of GoHighLevel.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my company, it looked like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, hopefully you can learn from my painful errors and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses maintain their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the ideal messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client connections through effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for businesses seeking to settle their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new tool that will certainly change your service … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could minimize rubbing points that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few even more irritations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire technology infrastructure from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention dealing with lost performance during the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large mistake. The problems began piling up promptly, until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent to customers that should NOT have received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. However the problem lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were responsible. But this description really did not make any kind of feeling, because the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely inappropriate and simply really did not help my business. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in completely various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing What Are The Disadvantages of GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the affordable price for access to so many features. However I promptly learned this affordable base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core capability. All of a sudden my bank card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open prices plunge nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending techniques or attempted every repairing method, I could barely push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards What Are The Disadvantages of GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had dreadful interaction. The only point I might believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed costs, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant mistake. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any benefits.
No software is ideal, yet the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with important features competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. But in hindsight, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program usually covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life easier, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins trust fund.
- Look for honest reviews. Pleased assistance reviews indicate less if extreme concerns suggest poor overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can perfectly meet every distinct organization requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental renovations generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more cynical of “as well good to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily need to earn trust fund with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.