As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to simplify operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel AI Lead Gen System.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a dream happened theoretically. That would not desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this popular brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, ideally you can gain from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting customer partnerships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially appealing for services aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will change your service … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, but a couple of more irritations led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I recognized switching over platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a summary of simply a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing lost productivity during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a large blunder. The issues began accumulating swiftly, until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I ran into.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, managing membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to users who must NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the problem lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were to blame. However this description really did not make any kind of sense, since the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my business. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complicated.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low price tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel AI Lead Gen System
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the inexpensive rate for access to so many features. But I swiftly learned this low-cost base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core performance. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices drop practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending techniques or attempted every repairing trick, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel AI Lead Gen System.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had awful interaction. The only point I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed costs, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial blunder. The cons drastically surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is perfect, however the large volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of important features properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it showed me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software commonly covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life much easier, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Happy support reviews mean less if excessive problems suggest poor overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can completely meet every distinct business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental renovations commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “too great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn trust through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.