As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to streamline procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Agency Setup.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a desire come true theoretically. Who would not want a solitary option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this preferred new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, hopefully you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize 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 advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use website and social media kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially attractive for services wanting to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with marginal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will transform your company … The turf usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, but a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole technology framework from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an introduction of simply a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– and also managing shed productivity throughout the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel offering a better long-term solution for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big blunder. The concerns started accumulating rapidly, till it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning penalty … till suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent to customers that must NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I anxiously tried repairing and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the issue continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely inappropriate and just didn’t work for my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Agency Setup
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the cost effective cost for access to a lot of features. However I promptly learned this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core performance. Suddenly my charge card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates drop nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing trick, I could barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Agency Setup.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had terrible engagement. The only thing I might think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and horrible interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge error. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any type of advantages.
No software application is perfect, however the large volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to deal with crucial functions properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application commonly covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life simpler, not much more complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs count on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins trust.
- Seek objective reviews. Happy assistance assesses mean less if excessive problems indicate poor overall usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary option can completely satisfy every distinct business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I discovered to be much more unconvinced of “as well great to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of glossy new items. The tools you make use of daily ought to make depend on through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.