As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Brand Boards.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. Who would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this preferred new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, hopefully you can gain from my unpleasant mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small businesses maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer connections via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially appealing for businesses looking to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned accurately with very little fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your business … The turf usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction factors that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a couple of more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply some of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– not to mention handling shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term option for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge mistake. The concerns began piling up swiftly, until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, managing subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to users who need to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the problem continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they slightly declared “web server problems” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any sense, because the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally inappropriate and just really did not work for my organization. I have countless contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in completely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low price tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Brand Boards
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the cost effective cost for accessibility to numerous features. But I promptly learned this cheap base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged every single time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open rates drop practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing technique, I could hardly push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Brand Boards.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only thing I might assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, broken features, and terrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive mistake. The cons significantly outweighed any benefits.
No software program is best, but the large quantity of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to manage important features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software usually obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life easier, not a lot more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins depend on.
- Look for honest evaluations. Pleased support reviews imply much less if too much problems imply bad overall functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can flawlessly meet every distinct business need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step renovations commonly outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be more skeptical of “as well excellent to be true” marketing cases and much less lured by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily must gain depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.