As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to improve procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel Affirm.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a dream happened theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, ideally you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small businesses keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media sites types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer connections via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations looking to settle their technology stack.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with very little hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “glossy item syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s discussing a new device that will reinvent your business … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few even more irritations led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology infrastructure from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a summary of just a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to handling lost performance throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a big blunder. The problems began piling up swiftly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, managing subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to customers who must NOT have actually received them. This happened 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I frantically attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. But the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they slightly declared “server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any type of sense, considering that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t help my organization. I have countless get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low price tag included pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Affirm
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the affordable rate for accessibility to a lot of features. However I quickly discovered this economical base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send an email with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open prices plummet nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I might barely push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Affirm.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had awful engagement. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening 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 charges, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big error. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any type of advantages.
No software program is best, but the large volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with important functions effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software typically covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life much easier, not more complicated and untidy.
- Openness develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins trust fund.
- Look for objective reviews. Pleased support examines indicate much less if too much issues indicate bad overall use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I found out to be extra hesitant of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the appeal of glossy new objects. The tools you use daily need to gain trust fund through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.