As a firm proprietor for over a years, I count on software program and automation to streamline operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel For Digital Marketing.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who would not want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, hopefully you can learn from my agonizing errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it handled everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media sites types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting client relationships with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially attractive for companies seeking to consolidate their technology pile.
Essentially, it just worked accurately with very little difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your service … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a few even more frustrations led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology facilities from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of just some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– as well as managing shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large mistake. The issues began accumulating swiftly, till it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, handling membership expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent to users that must NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. However the issue persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were at fault. Yet this description really did not make any type of feeling, since the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing workflows involved digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of overall, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the small cost tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Digital Marketing
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the budget-friendly price for accessibility to many features. However I promptly discovered this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core capability. Instantly my charge card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices drop almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending methods or tried every fixing method, I might barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Digital Marketing.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had terrible interaction. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden fees, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant error. The cons considerably exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software program is perfect, however the large quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage essential functions effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. But in knowledge, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program often covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your work life simpler, not a lot more complex and messy.
- Transparency develops count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins trust.
- Seek honest testimonials. Pleased support examines suggest less if too much problems suggest inadequate total usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary remedy can completely meet every unique company demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step improvements commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I found out to be extra hesitant of “too great to be true” marketing cases and much less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The tools you utilize daily need to gain trust through openness and performance, not slick advertising.