As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to improve operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my focus Does GoHighLevel Automate Google Reviews.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a desire happened theoretically. That would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation requirements.
I found Keap user-friendly to utilize and it handled whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and boost profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and supporting client relationships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially appealing for companies aiming to settle their technology stack.
Essentially, it just worked accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly revolutionize your business … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, however a couple of even more aggravations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology infrastructure from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an introduction of just several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as taking care of shed performance during the button.
However ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large error. The concerns began piling up rapidly, until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, managing membership expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to individuals that need to NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they vaguely claimed “web server problems” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any feeling, since the mistakes continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely unacceptable and just didn’t help my service. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, private, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing Does GoHighLevel Automate Google Reviews
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the economical cost for access to numerous features. Yet I promptly discovered this economical base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed whenever you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plunge virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing method, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards Does GoHighLevel Automate Google Reviews.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had awful involvement. The only point I can think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed charges, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a massive blunder. The cons substantially exceeded any benefits.
No software program is best, yet the large quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle critical features competently or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. However in knowledge, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program commonly covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life less complicated, not extra difficult and messy.
- Openness builds depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues damages trust fund.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Happy assistance evaluates suggest much less if extreme problems suggest bad overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can completely meet every special service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental improvements generally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more hesitant of “also excellent to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily should make count on with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.