As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to enhance procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest FlowTrack Vs GoHighLevel.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a desire happened theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, hopefully you can learn from my excruciating blunders and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses maintain their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and customers receive the right messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and rise revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically eye-catching for businesses looking to consolidate their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with minimal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any 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 untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new device that will change your service … The yard usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few even more frustrations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching over systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire technology framework from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of simply several of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention managing shed efficiency throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a big mistake. The issues began accumulating quickly, until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, handling membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating penalty … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally unimportant e-mails had been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of sense, given that the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely undesirable and just really did not work for my organization. I have countless contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low cost tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing FlowTrack Vs GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the cost effective rate for access to a lot of features. But I quickly learned this economical base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core functionality. Suddenly my credit card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open prices plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria FlowTrack Vs GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had horrible interaction. The only point I could believe that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, busted features, and awful interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a massive blunder. The cons substantially surpassed any advantages.
No software is best, yet the large quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of 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 initiative migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. However in hindsight, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program typically covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life much easier, not extra difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys depend on.
- Seek honest testimonials. Happy assistance examines indicate much less if extreme problems imply inadequate total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can completely fulfill every distinct company need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step renovations commonly exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “also great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily should gain depend on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.