As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to simplify procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel URL Redirects.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a dream happened theoretically. Who would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this popular new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my painful errors and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to make use of and it handled everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and customers get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and supporting client relationships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for companies looking to consolidate their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with minimal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will change your business … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a couple of even more irritations led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole technology facilities from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of simply a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– as well as taking care of shed performance during the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large blunder. The issues began piling up swiftly, up until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to individuals who must NOT have actually received them. This happened three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the issue persisted.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any type of feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely undesirable and simply really did not help my business. I have countless calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows involved digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage total, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel URL Redirects
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the affordable price for access to so many features. However I rapidly discovered this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core performance. Suddenly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send an email with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates plummet practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every repairing method, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel URL Redirects.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed costs, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a massive error. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any type of advantages.
No software program is excellent, however the large volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage crucial functions effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software program usually covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not more challenging and untidy.
- Openness builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles destroys count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Happy assistance evaluates imply much less if too much problems indicate inadequate total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental renovations usually exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I learned to be much more unconvinced of “as well excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the allure of glossy new objects. The tools you use daily must make count on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.