As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel Single Sign On (SSO).
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a dream happened on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, ideally you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Use site and social media forms to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client partnerships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially attractive for businesses seeking to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with marginal hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new device that will certainly transform your organization … The yard typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, but a few more disappointments led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole technology facilities from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of just a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– in addition to handling shed productivity during the button.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large mistake. The issues began accumulating rapidly, till it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, handling membership expiries and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 completely pointless emails had actually been sent to users that ought to NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the problem persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were responsible. However this description really did not make any kind of feeling, considering that the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely undesirable and just didn’t benefit my service. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Simple tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of overall, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Single Sign On (SSO)
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the budget friendly price for access to numerous features. However I promptly discovered this affordable base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core functionality. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every single time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing method, I can hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Single Sign On (SSO).
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible involvement. The only point I can believe that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a substantial mistake. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any type of advantages.
No software application is excellent, however the large volume of troubles was beyond 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 vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. But in knowledge, it educated me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around new software application usually obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life simpler, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins depend on.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Happy support examines indicate much less if too much issues imply inadequate total functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step renovations generally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more cynical of “too excellent to be real” marketing cases and less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you use daily ought to earn count on via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.