As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to improve procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Affiliate Agreement.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and failing) to switch over to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies keep their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the right messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and supporting customer connections with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically appealing for companies wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with very little difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new device that will revolutionize your service … The yard typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction factors that I would certainly discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a couple of even more stress led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole tech framework from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of just some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– and also handling shed efficiency during the switch.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large error. The problems began piling up rapidly, till it reached a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned 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 e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, managing membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … till all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 totally irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to users that need to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they slightly asserted “web server issues” were responsible. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, given that the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t help my service. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally undependable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low cost tag featured pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Affiliate Agreement
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the economical cost for accessibility to many features. However I swiftly discovered this affordable base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged whenever you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices plunge practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every repairing method, I could hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Affiliate Agreement.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly 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 company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed costs, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant error. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software application is perfect, but the large volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to take care of important features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software typically obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life simpler, not extra complex and untidy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages count on.
- Look for unbiased reviews. Pleased assistance assesses mean much less if extreme concerns indicate inadequate general functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can flawlessly satisfy every unique service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be much more cynical of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the allure of glossy new objects. The tools you use daily must make count on via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.