As a firm owner for over a years, I rely on software and automation to simplify operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel URL Parameters.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my company, it looked like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, ideally you can pick up from my painful errors and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small businesses keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for organizations looking to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will certainly transform your service … The lawn commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of even more stress led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial 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, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech framework from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– and also managing shed performance during the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-term solution for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large mistake. The issues began accumulating swiftly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
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 consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be working fine … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent to users who should NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the problem persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they slightly claimed “server issues” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, because the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was completely inappropriate and simply didn’t help my organization. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and challenging.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low price tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel URL Parameters
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget friendly rate for accessibility to a lot of features. However I quickly discovered this cheap base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core capability. All of a sudden my bank card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every time you send an email through their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open prices drop virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every repairing trick, I can hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel URL Parameters.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only point I might assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive error. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any type of advantages.
No software program is best, however the sheer volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage important functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software commonly covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life easier, not extra complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins trust fund.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Happy assistance examines imply much less if extreme concerns suggest poor overall functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single service can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I learned to be more doubtful of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The tools you utilize daily should make trust fund through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.