As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to streamline operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Incoming Call Timeout.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my company, it looked like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, hopefully you can gain from my painful mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage website and social networks types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and supporting customer partnerships through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically attractive for organizations aiming to combine their technology stack.
Generally, it just worked accurately with very little fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new tool that will certainly transform your service … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few more disappointments led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching over systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole tech infrastructure from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of just a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention taking care of lost performance during the button.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge error. The issues began piling up swiftly, till it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing membership expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be working penalty … till unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to users that must NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I desperately tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “web server problems” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any sense, because the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely inappropriate and just really did not benefit my company. I have countless get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like editing workflows included excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to manage total, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Incoming Call Timeout
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the budget-friendly price for access to a lot of features. Yet I swiftly learned this economical base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core functionality. Suddenly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed whenever you send an email with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open rates plunge almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every troubleshooting method, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Incoming Call Timeout.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had horrible interaction. The only point I could assume that would be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed charges, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant mistake. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any type of benefits.
No software program is best, yet the sheer volume 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 take care of vital features capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software typically obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices must make your work life simpler, not a lot more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys count on.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Satisfied support evaluates mean less if extreme problems suggest poor general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can completely meet every distinct business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements commonly exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I discovered to be more hesitant of “too great to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny new items. The tools you make use of daily should gain count on via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.