As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my attention Does GoHighLevel Have A Website Builder.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a dream become a reality theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and failing) to change to this preferred new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, ideally you can gain from my painful mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use website and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting client connections with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for companies wanting to consolidate their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with very little hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny object disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will change your organization … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a couple of more stress led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching over platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire technology facilities from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a review of just several of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention taking care of lost performance during the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large mistake. The concerns started piling up promptly, until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Protection Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, handling subscription expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … till instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unnecessary emails had actually been sent to users that ought to NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I anxiously attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the problem persisted.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were responsible. However this description really did not make any feeling, considering that the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally unacceptable and simply really did not help my business. I have thousands of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing Does GoHighLevel Have A Website Builder
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the inexpensive rate for access to many features. But I swiftly learned this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core performance. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send out an email through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices drop almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every fixing method, I might hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks Does GoHighLevel Have A Website Builder.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful interaction. The only point I can think that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden fees, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant error. The cons drastically outweighed any type of benefits.
No software program is excellent, but the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with critical functions properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. However in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application commonly covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not much more complex and untidy.
- Openness develops depend on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek impartial reviews. Pleased support assesses imply much less if extreme issues indicate poor overall functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single solution can flawlessly meet every special service need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements usually surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more unconvinced of “too great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of glossy new items. The devices you make use of daily must make depend on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.