As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to improve operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my attention Does GoHighLevel Have Hosting.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always looking to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a dream come true on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this preferred 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 painful mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and clients receive the best messages at the right time. Use website and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and supporting customer relationships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for businesses looking to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with very little fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new tool that will change your company … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a couple of even more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching over systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology framework from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of simply a few of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– and also handling lost productivity during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge error. The problems started accumulating quickly, until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … until instantly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent to users who need to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I frantically tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the trouble persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “server problems” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any type of sense, since the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely unacceptable and just really did not benefit my service. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage overall, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the small cost tag included pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Does GoHighLevel Have Hosting
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the affordable rate for accessibility to so many features. But I promptly learned this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic fees for core functionality. Instantly my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send out an email via their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plummet almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out practices or tried every repairing trick, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards Does GoHighLevel Have Hosting.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only point I can assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big blunder. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any advantages.
No software program is excellent, but the large volume of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical features capably or think a vendor 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 contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software frequently covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life simpler, not a lot more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues damages count on.
- Seek objective testimonials. Pleased assistance reviews imply much less if too much concerns imply inadequate general usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind company need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step renovations generally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Basically, I found out to be much more unconvinced of “as well excellent to be real” marketing cases and less tempted by the appeal of glossy new items. The devices you utilize daily must make depend on through openness and performance, not slick advertising.