As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my focus Can I Use GoHighLevel For Free.
The idea 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 service, it looked like a desire come to life on paper. That would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, ideally you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it handled everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer relationships with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for services seeking to consolidate their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked accurately with very little difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a new tool that will change your business … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a few more stress led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching systems was going to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an overview of just some of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– and also managing lost productivity during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a huge error. The problems began accumulating rapidly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, taking care of membership expirations and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be working fine … up until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had been sent out to users who should NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I hysterically tried repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. However the issue persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they vaguely asserted “server issues” were to blame. However this explanation really did not make any type of sense, given that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely unacceptable and just really did not help my company. I have countless calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like editing workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low price tag featured expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Can I Use GoHighLevel For Free
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the cost effective rate for access to numerous features. However I promptly learned this low-cost base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core performance. Suddenly my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open rates plummet almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every fixing trick, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria Can I Use GoHighLevel For Free.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible interaction. The only point I might believe that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge mistake. The cons dramatically surpassed any benefits.
No software is ideal, yet the sheer quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to take care of essential functions competently or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. But in hindsight, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software commonly obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life easier, not more complicated and untidy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins trust fund.
- Seek honest evaluations. Pleased support examines indicate less if excessive concerns indicate poor overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind business requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step renovations commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I found out to be a lot more doubtful of “also good to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily must gain count on with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.