As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to streamline procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention Does GoHighLevel Have A CRM.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a dream come to life on paper. That would not want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, ideally you can pick up from my painful blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small businesses keep their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing consumer partnerships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly appealing for organizations wanting to combine their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with minimal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly change your organization … The lawn commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a couple of even more frustrations led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was going to require moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole tech framework from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to handling lost productivity throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge error. The issues started accumulating rapidly, until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, managing membership expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … until all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent to individuals who ought to NOT have received them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I desperately attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally undesirable and simply really did not work for my company. I have countless calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the small cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Does GoHighLevel Have A CRM
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the inexpensive rate for accessibility to a lot of features. However I promptly discovered this economical base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates drop almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every fixing technique, I might hardly push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards Does GoHighLevel Have A CRM.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only thing I could think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden charges, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant mistake. The cons considerably exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software is perfect, but the sheer volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle critical functions capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software often covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life easier, not extra challenging and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins trust.
- Look for impartial reviews. Delighted support assesses imply less if too much concerns suggest poor overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can flawlessly satisfy every distinct organization demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements normally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be much more skeptical of “also great to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you use daily ought to gain depend on through transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.