As a company owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel Background.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly aiming to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a desire happened on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation requirements.
I found Keap instinctive to utilize and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small businesses keep their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and boost profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting customer relationships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically appealing for businesses wanting to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it simply functioned reliably with minimal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly transform your organization … The lawn often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few more stress led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching over systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of just some of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– in addition to managing lost performance throughout the button.
However ultimately, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The concerns started piling up quickly, up until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion reminders, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to individuals who must NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the problem continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were at fault. Yet this description really did not make any type of feeling, because the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was completely inappropriate and simply didn’t benefit my business. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complicated.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage total, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Background
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the cost effective price for access to a lot of features. However I promptly learned this cheap base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core performance. Instantly my charge card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates plummet nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every repairing technique, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Background.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only point I might think that would certainly be causing 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 problems, hidden fees, busted features, and terrible interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any type of advantages.
No software program is best, however the sheer volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage important features properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application commonly obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life less complicated, not extra complex and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins trust fund.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Happy assistance examines mean much less if excessive concerns imply bad overall functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can completely meet every one-of-a-kind service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental enhancements normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be extra unconvinced of “also excellent to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the attraction of shiny new things. The devices you utilize daily need to earn trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.