As an agency owner for over a decade, I count on software and automation to improve operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Mobile Estimates.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a desire come true on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, ideally you can pick up from my uncomfortable errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the best messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing customer connections through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically appealing for organizations seeking to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it just functioned reliably with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your service … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a few even more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew changing systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire technology framework from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of simply several of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– and also managing lost performance throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a huge blunder. The problems started accumulating promptly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely pointless e-mails had actually been sent to users that need to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “web server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally undesirable and just didn’t work for my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Easy tasks like editing workflows involved digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag featured pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Mobile Estimates
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget friendly rate for accessibility to so many features. But I promptly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core functionality. Instantly my bank card declarations had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to numerous dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, yet simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices plummet virtually over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every fixing trick, I could hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Mobile Estimates.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had awful interaction. The only point I could believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and horrible interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a massive mistake. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any benefits.
No software is perfect, however the large quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle important features competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software frequently covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life simpler, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Delighted support evaluates mean less if extreme issues indicate bad overall functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single solution can perfectly satisfy every unique organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step enhancements generally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be extra doubtful of “also excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the attraction of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily ought to gain count on via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.