As an agency owner for over a years, I rely upon software application and automation to simplify procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Billy Gene.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. Who would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my painful mistakes and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap intuitive to utilize and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help local business keep their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and customers get the right messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting consumer connections with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically attractive for services seeking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm call of “glossy object disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your organization … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of even more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision 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 choice I took lightly. I knew switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech framework from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an introduction of simply several of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a big blunder. The problems started accumulating quickly, up until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Security Issues & Several Vermin
Given 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 included sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely pointless e-mails had been sent to individuals that must NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were responsible. Yet this explanation really did not make any sense, because the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally unacceptable and just really did not benefit my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of total, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag featured pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Billy Gene
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the cost effective cost for access to a lot of features. However I swiftly discovered this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed whenever you send out an email with their web servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates plummet nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every fixing method, I might hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Billy Gene.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge blunder. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software program is perfect, but the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of critical features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software frequently covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life less complicated, not extra complex and messy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins depend on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Satisfied assistance reviews suggest much less if excessive problems imply bad total functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single solution can completely meet every one-of-a-kind business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step renovations commonly outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be extra cynical of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the allure of shiny new items. The devices you use daily need to gain trust with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.