As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to simplify procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Quiz Builder.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a desire come to life on paper. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, with any luck you can gain from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small companies maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing client partnerships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically appealing for businesses seeking to combine their technology pile.
Essentially, it just functioned accurately with marginal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will certainly change your company … The turf usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a couple of more stress led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech infrastructure from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a summary of just several of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling lost productivity during the switch.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The problems started piling up quickly, until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered 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 series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning fine … until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent to users that need to NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. But the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any kind of sense, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely inappropriate and simply really did not work for my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low price tag included expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Quiz Builder
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the budget-friendly cost for access to a lot of features. However I swiftly learned this low-cost base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core capability. Suddenly my credit card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send out an email through their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open prices plummet almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Quiz Builder.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge mistake. The cons considerably exceeded any benefits.
No software is excellent, but the sheer quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with essential features properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. However in hindsight, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software commonly obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life simpler, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness develops depend on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys trust fund.
- Seek honest evaluations. Satisfied assistance reviews mean much less if excessive problems suggest bad overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can flawlessly meet every distinct company need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental improvements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I learned to be much more doubtful of “also excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the appeal of glossy new things. The tools you make use of daily should make count on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.