As an agency proprietor for over a years, I count on software and automation to improve procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel 30 Day Saas Mode Free Trial.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a desire come true on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, ideally you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small businesses maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially appealing for organizations wanting to settle their tech stack.
Generally, it just worked accurately with very little fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The turf often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction points that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a couple of more frustrations led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire technology framework from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of just a few of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– and also taking care of lost productivity throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues started accumulating quickly, till it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, handling membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unnecessary emails had been sent to users that need to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I frantically attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the issue lingered.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were at fault. But this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely inappropriate and just didn’t work for my business. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Basic jobs like editing workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle general, private, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel 30 Day Saas Mode Free Trial
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the cost effective price for accessibility to numerous features. But I rapidly discovered this economical base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core performance. Suddenly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to numerous dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices plummet virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every fixing method, I might hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel 30 Day Saas Mode Free Trial.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had terrible engagement. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big error. The cons drastically outweighed any type of advantages.
No software is perfect, but the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage important features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it educated me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program usually obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life simpler, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Openness builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages trust fund.
- Look for honest reviews. Happy assistance evaluates suggest much less if excessive issues indicate poor overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can flawlessly fulfill every distinct service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step renovations usually exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In other words, I learned to be more unconvinced of “also good to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the appeal of glossy new items. The devices you make use of daily must gain count on through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.