As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to improve procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention Does GoHighLevel Host Websites.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner always wanting to streamline and scale my company, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my agonizing errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it handled everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and increase earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically appealing for companies looking to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply functioned accurately with marginal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a new device that will certainly transform your business … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, but a few even more irritations led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech facilities from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an overview of simply some of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of lost performance throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a huge error. The concerns began accumulating swiftly, until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning penalty … till suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent to individuals who should NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the trouble lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was entirely unacceptable and just really did not work for my service. I have thousands of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of overall, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low price tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing Does GoHighLevel Host Websites
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the inexpensive price for access to so many features. However I quickly learned this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core performance. Instantly my charge card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send out an email through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates drop almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out practices or tried every repairing trick, I can barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards Does GoHighLevel Host Websites.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had terrible engagement. The only point I might believe that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant error. The cons considerably surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software application is ideal, yet the large quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage crucial features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software usually obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your work life less complicated, not a lot more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys trust.
- Seek honest evaluations. Pleased support assesses suggest much less if excessive issues indicate bad overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can completely meet every one-of-a-kind business demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental renovations typically outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more cynical of “too great to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily need to make depend on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.