As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel 90 Day Trial.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it handled whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses maintain their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage website and social networks forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically eye-catching for businesses wanting to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will revolutionize your business … The lawn frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction points that I would certainly discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized changing platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire technology infrastructure from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an overview of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– as well as handling shed efficiency during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big error. The issues started accumulating promptly, till it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, taking care of membership expirations and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent to customers that should NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the trouble continued.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally undesirable and simply didn’t benefit my service. I have thousands of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and difficult.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low cost tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel 90 Day Trial
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the affordable price for accessibility to numerous features. But I rapidly discovered this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core capability. Instantly my bank card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open prices plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel 90 Day Trial.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed charges, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant mistake. The cons substantially outweighed any benefits.
No software program is excellent, however the large volume of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to deal with vital functions competently or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. However in hindsight, it showed me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software commonly obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your job life much easier, not a lot more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins trust fund.
- Look for honest reviews. Delighted support evaluates indicate less if excessive problems imply bad overall use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can flawlessly meet every unique business requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental improvements usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “as well excellent to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the allure of glossy new items. The devices you make use of daily need to make trust fund via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.