As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my interest Does GoHighLevel Have Project Management.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a dream come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, ideally you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small businesses maintain their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing customer connections via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically appealing for companies looking to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with marginal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren call of “shiny things disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will certainly transform your business … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction points that I would certainly found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, but a few even more aggravations led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire technology facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a review of simply several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– not to mention dealing with shed performance during the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge mistake. The concerns started accumulating rapidly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, managing membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be working penalty … until instantly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to customers that need to NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I frantically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were responsible. But this description really did not make any kind of sense, given that the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was entirely undesirable and just didn’t benefit my business. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally undependable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows involved digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in entirely different areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of total, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the small cost tag included expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing Does GoHighLevel Have Project Management
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the budget-friendly rate for accessibility to a lot of features. But I quickly discovered this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic costs for core functionality. Instantly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every single time you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to numerous dollars in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open prices drop almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every repairing technique, I can barely push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Does GoHighLevel Have Project Management.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only point I might assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big blunder. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any benefits.
No software program is best, yet the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage crucial features competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application often obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life less complicated, not a lot more complex and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust.
- Look for objective evaluations. Happy support examines mean much less if excessive problems indicate poor general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary service can perfectly fulfill every special service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step improvements usually exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I found out to be much more cynical of “also good to be true” marketing claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily need to gain depend on with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.