As a company owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel $97 Plan.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always wanting to streamline and scale my service, it looked like a dream happened on paper. Who would not want a solitary service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this popular brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, ideally you can pick up from my agonizing errors and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies maintain their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client relationships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly appealing for services wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply worked reliably with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new device that will transform your company … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a few even more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood switching platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire tech facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of simply some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to dealing with lost efficiency during the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big error. The issues started piling up swiftly, till it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event reminders, managing subscription expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had been sent out to individuals who must NOT have actually received them. This took place three days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they vaguely declared “server issues” were at fault. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of sense, considering that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my organization. I have thousands of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in completely different areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of general, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel $97 Plan
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the inexpensive cost for accessibility to numerous features. But I promptly discovered this cheap base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core performance. Instantly my bank card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I could hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel $97 Plan.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only thing I could believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and terrible interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a massive blunder. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software application is ideal, however the large quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of vital functions effectively or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard phone call 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 ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application often obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life easier, not much more difficult and untidy.
- Openness builds trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys trust fund.
- Seek objective testimonials. Pleased assistance examines imply less if too much concerns suggest poor total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements typically exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I discovered to be much more cynical of “too great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of glossy new objects. The devices you make use of daily should earn trust fund with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.