As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to enhance operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my focus GoHighLevel Google Meet.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly wanting to streamline and scale my company, it looked like a dream happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to utilize and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small companies maintain their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the best messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing client partnerships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically eye-catching for services looking to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with very little difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your business … The grass often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a couple of more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire tech facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a review of simply some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention managing shed productivity throughout the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large blunder. The problems began piling up promptly, till it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to individuals who must NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “web server problems” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any feeling, because the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely inappropriate and simply didn’t help my service. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Google Meet
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the economical cost for access to numerous features. However I rapidly learned this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core performance. Instantly my bank card declarations had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open prices drop practically over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending techniques or attempted every fixing technique, I could hardly nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Google Meet.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I might assume that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, broken features, and terrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial error. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any advantages.
No software program is perfect, yet the large quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage important functions properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. However in knowledge, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around new software commonly covers larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life simpler, not more complicated and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Satisfied assistance assesses indicate less if excessive issues imply bad general usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary remedy can perfectly satisfy every distinct service requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements usually outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily should make depend on with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.