As an agency proprietor for over a years, I count on software program and automation to enhance procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel 5 Day AI Challenge.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this preferred new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, ideally you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small businesses keep their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the best messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social networks types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing customer connections with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially attractive for companies seeking to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it simply functioned reliably with very little fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will reinvent your company … The lawn frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a few more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching over systems was going to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech facilities from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of simply several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to dealing with lost efficiency throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better long-lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge blunder. The issues began accumulating swiftly, until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, handling membership expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent to users that need to NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the issue lingered.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they slightly claimed “web server problems” were responsible. But this description didn’t make any type of feeling, given that the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally undesirable and simply really did not help my organization. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complex.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel 5 Day AI Challenge
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the inexpensive rate for access to so many features. But I promptly learned this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core functionality. Suddenly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged every single time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates plummet virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting method, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel 5 Day AI Challenge.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had terrible engagement. The only thing I could believe that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a huge error. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software program is ideal, yet the sheer volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage vital functions competently or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software typically obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools need to make your job life less complicated, not a lot more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins depend on.
- Seek impartial reviews. Delighted assistance assesses imply less if extreme problems imply poor total use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can completely meet every unique organization need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be extra hesitant of “too excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn count on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.