As an agency owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to improve procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel Dream Vacation Contest.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a dream become a reality on paper. That would not desire a single option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, ideally you can pick up from my uncomfortable errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About 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 actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist local business maintain their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Use site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing client relationships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly attractive for businesses seeking to consolidate their tech pile.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with marginal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational structure 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 disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your company … The turf typically looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could reduce friction points that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, however a few even more frustrations led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of just some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to dealing with shed efficiency during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The problems started piling up quickly, until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, handling membership expirations and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely pointless e-mails had been sent to users who should NOT have gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I desperately attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the problem lingered.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they slightly declared “server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any type of sense, considering that the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of general, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the affordable price tag featured pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Dream Vacation Contest
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the affordable price for accessibility to numerous features. However I quickly discovered this low-cost base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core performance. Suddenly my bank card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed each time you send out an email via their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices plunge nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every fixing trick, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Dream Vacation Contest.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had awful involvement. The only point I could assume that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and awful interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial mistake. The cons significantly outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software is excellent, but the sheer volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle crucial features competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in knowledge, it taught me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software often covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your job life easier, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys trust fund.
- Look for objective evaluations. Happy assistance reviews indicate much less if extreme issues imply poor total usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly meet every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be more hesitant of “also great to be true” marketing cases and much less lured by the attraction of glossy new things. The tools you utilize daily should earn trust via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.