As a company owner for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to simplify operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Buy Now Pay Later.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my company, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and falling short) to change to this preferred new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, ideally you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client administration and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the right time. Use site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and supporting customer partnerships via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially attractive for companies seeking to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply worked dependably with very little fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly transform your organization … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction points that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a couple of even more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating 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 dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech infrastructure from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of just a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– as well as handling lost efficiency during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel providing a much better lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large blunder. The problems started accumulating swiftly, until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent to users who ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the issue continued.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they slightly declared “web server problems” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, because the mistakes proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was completely unacceptable and just didn’t work for my company. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unstable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low cost tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Buy Now Pay Later
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the economical cost for access to so many features. Yet I rapidly learned this low-cost base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core performance. Instantly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged every single time you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open rates plunge practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every fixing method, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Buy Now Pay Later.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big mistake. The disadvantages dramatically surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software is best, but the large volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage vital functions competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. However in hindsight, it taught me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software program commonly covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices must make your work life less complicated, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages count on.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Happy assistance reviews imply much less if extreme concerns indicate poor general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can completely meet every unique service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be more skeptical of “as well good to be true” marketing cases and much less lured by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily ought to gain depend on through openness and performance, not slick advertising.