As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to improve procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Roadmap.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, ideally you can gain from my uncomfortable errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist local business maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and customers receive the right messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting customer connections via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially appealing for companies looking to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply worked accurately with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy things disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s discussing a new device that will revolutionize your company … The grass often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a couple of even more frustrations led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology framework from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an overview of simply a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling shed efficiency throughout the switch.
However inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting service for my company, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a big error. The concerns began piling up rapidly, until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent out to users who need to NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. But the problem persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “web server concerns” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any kind of sense, since the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely undesirable and simply didn’t help my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low price tag came with costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Roadmap
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the budget friendly cost for access to many features. But I promptly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every repairing trick, I could hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Roadmap.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible engagement. The only point I could assume that would be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any advantages.
No software is ideal, but the large quantity of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to handle important features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. However in hindsight, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software application usually covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life simpler, not more complex and messy.
- Openness develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Delighted assistance reviews suggest less if excessive concerns suggest bad total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can perfectly satisfy every special organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental renovations typically outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I learned to be more skeptical of “as well great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily should make count on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.