As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to improve operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Annual Plans.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire come to life on paper. Who would not desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this popular new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, hopefully you can gain from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing 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 happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it took care of everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients obtain the best messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for companies aiming to consolidate their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply worked accurately with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will reinvent your organization … The lawn frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction factors that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a few more frustrations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of shed productivity throughout the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge blunder. The concerns began accumulating rapidly, till it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, handling subscription expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unnecessary emails had been sent to customers who need to NOT have received them. This took place three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I hysterically attempted repairing and restoring the automation from square one. But the problem persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my business. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Basic tasks like editing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the small cost tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Annual Plans
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the cost effective cost for accessibility to numerous features. However I quickly learned this economical base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core capability. Suddenly my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices plummet practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every fixing trick, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Annual Plans.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had awful interaction. The only point I can believe that would be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big error. The cons dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software program is perfect, however the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle essential features effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software program frequently obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your job life easier, not a lot more challenging and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins depend on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Happy support examines suggest much less if too much problems indicate poor total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can completely meet every one-of-a-kind business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements typically surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be extra skeptical of “also great to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily need to gain trust fund through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.