As a company owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Affiliate Program.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a dream happened on paper. Who would not want a single service 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 preferred new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, with any luck you can learn from my painful mistakes and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Use internet site and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting client connections with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for companies seeking to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with minimal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will reinvent your organization … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower friction points that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a few even more stress led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology facilities from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply a few of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning everything over– not to mention handling lost productivity during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large mistake. The issues began accumulating rapidly, until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given 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 sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, handling membership expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … until all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to customers who must NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, because the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely inappropriate and just didn’t help my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Affiliate Program
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the cost effective price for access to a lot of features. Yet I rapidly discovered this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic fees for core performance. Instantly my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send an email via their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates plummet practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending methods or tried every fixing trick, I can barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Affiliate Program.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only point I could think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, busted features, and terrible interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a big mistake. The disadvantages considerably outweighed any type of benefits.
No software application is excellent, but the large quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage important features properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software usually obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life simpler, not extra difficult and messy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages count on.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Satisfied assistance examines indicate much less if too much problems indicate bad general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can completely meet every special company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental enhancements typically exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I learned to be a lot more skeptical of “also good to be true” marketing claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you make use of daily ought to make trust via openness and performance, not slick advertising.