As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software application and automation to enhance procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my interest Does GoHighLevel Have A Mobile App.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a desire happened on paper. Who would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this popular new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, with any luck you can gain from my excruciating blunders and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job management option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist local business keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients get the best messages at the correct time. Use website and social media kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and supporting client relationships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically appealing for organizations aiming to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with minimal fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will transform your service … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower friction factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a few even more aggravations led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood changing systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire technology infrastructure from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of simply a few of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing shed efficiency throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a large error. The concerns started piling up quickly, till it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, handling subscription expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to customers who need to NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the problem persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “server issues” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, considering that the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally unacceptable and simply really did not work for my company. I have countless get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and challenging.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing Does GoHighLevel Have A Mobile App
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the affordable rate for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I swiftly learned this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send an email through their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending methods or attempted every fixing method, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks Does GoHighLevel Have A Mobile App.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only point I could assume 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.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive mistake. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software program is excellent, yet the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to handle vital features effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around new software usually covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life much easier, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins depend on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Satisfied assistance assesses indicate less if too much problems indicate bad general usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary option can perfectly meet every unique organization need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements generally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Simply put, I found out to be more hesitant of “also great to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less tempted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily must earn trust fund through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.