As a company owner for over a years, I depend on software application and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel N8N.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. Who would not desire a single service that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and falling short) to change to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small businesses maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client relationships via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly eye-catching for businesses seeking to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with very little difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s discussing a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your business … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few more frustrations led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire tech facilities from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an overview of simply a few of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning everything over– and also handling lost performance during the button.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The concerns began piling up rapidly, until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, handling membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning penalty … till instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely pointless e-mails had actually been sent to customers that ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were responsible. But this description really did not make any kind of sense, since the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel N8N
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the cost effective price for accessibility to numerous features. But I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge virtually over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out methods or tried every repairing method, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel N8N.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had awful interaction. The only point I might believe that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had lastly 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 massive mistake. The cons drastically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software is best, yet the large volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to handle crucial features capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application often covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life simpler, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins depend on.
- Seek honest testimonials. Happy support reviews mean much less if too much concerns indicate poor general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can flawlessly fulfill every special organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental improvements usually surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In short, I learned to be a lot more hesitant of “also great to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily must make trust via openness and performance, not slick advertising.