As a company owner for over a years, I rely on software and automation to streamline procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Black Friday Deal.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a desire become a reality on paper. That would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this popular new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, hopefully you can gain from my excruciating mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small businesses keep their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially appealing for businesses wanting to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with minimal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s discussing a new tool that will certainly change your service … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing points that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, but a few more frustrations led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– as well as managing lost performance throughout the switch.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a huge error. The concerns began accumulating quickly, until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, managing membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating penalty … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had been sent to individuals that need to NOT have obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the problem persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were at fault. Yet this description didn’t make any type of feeling, since the mistakes continued happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely undesirable and just didn’t benefit my service. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely various areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle overall, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low price tag featured pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Black Friday Deal
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the cost effective rate for access to numerous features. Yet I rapidly learned this inexpensive base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core performance. Instantly my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an email via their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open prices plunge nearly over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every fixing technique, I can hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Black Friday Deal.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had terrible engagement. The only point I might believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive blunder. The cons substantially exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software is excellent, but the large volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of important functions properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult 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 Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software application usually obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life simpler, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys count on.
- Seek honest testimonials. Pleased assistance reviews imply less if too much problems imply inadequate general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary remedy can completely meet every one-of-a-kind business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental renovations generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Basically, I found out to be a lot more hesitant of “as well excellent to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the attraction of glossy new objects. The devices you make use of daily ought to earn depend on through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.