As a company owner for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Agency Pro.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my service, it seemed like a desire come true on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, ideally you can learn from my painful errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use website and social media sites types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and increase earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing client connections via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly appealing for organizations aiming to settle their tech stack.
Generally, it just functioned reliably with marginal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your organization … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a couple of even more stress led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching over systems was going to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole technology facilities from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of just several of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as dealing with lost performance throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a better long-lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge error. The issues started accumulating swiftly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, handling membership expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to users who should NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the issue persisted.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they slightly declared “server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any feeling, given that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was completely undesirable and just really did not benefit my organization. I have countless get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item prepared 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 soon realized the affordable price tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Agency Pro
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the affordable rate for access to numerous features. However I rapidly discovered this economical base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic costs for core functionality. Suddenly my charge card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email through their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to numerous bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates drop nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending methods or tried every repairing technique, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Agency Pro.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only point I might think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed charges, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a massive mistake. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software program is best, but the large quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to handle critical features capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. However in knowledge, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application usually covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life easier, not a lot more difficult and messy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys trust fund.
- Look for unbiased reviews. Pleased support examines indicate much less if extreme issues suggest bad general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step renovations typically surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I found out to be extra doubtful of “also good to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new items. The devices you utilize daily ought to earn depend on via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.