As a company owner for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to streamline procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel Email Builder.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire happened on paper. Who would not desire a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses keep their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and supporting client connections via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially attractive for companies wanting to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it simply functioned reliably with minimal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will certainly transform your organization … The yard frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few more irritations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The 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 significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I recognized changing systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of just several of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– as well as managing shed performance throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The problems began accumulating quickly, till it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, managing membership expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely pointless e-mails had been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the trouble continued.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were at fault. But this description really did not make any type of feeling, since the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was completely inappropriate and just didn’t work for my organization. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour 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 absolutely different sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of total, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Email Builder
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget friendly rate for accessibility to a lot of features. However I rapidly discovered this low-cost base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open prices plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting method, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Email Builder.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only point I might think that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden costs, damaged features, and awful interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The cons considerably surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software program is perfect, yet the large quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial functions properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program usually obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life easier, not more challenging and messy.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues damages trust.
- Seek objective evaluations. Delighted assistance evaluates suggest less if extreme problems imply poor overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can flawlessly fulfill every distinct business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental renovations usually exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be a lot more skeptical of “too excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily should gain trust via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.