As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to streamline procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Career Coaching Playbook.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a desire come to life on paper. That would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the ideal messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing customer connections with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for companies aiming to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will certainly transform your company … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew switching platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire tech facilities from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a summary of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning everything over– as well as managing shed efficiency during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a big blunder. The issues started piling up quickly, until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, managing membership expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely irrelevant emails had been sent out to individuals who must NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “web server issues” were responsible. But this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely undesirable and simply really did not work for my service. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of total, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag featured pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Career Coaching Playbook
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the affordable rate for accessibility to so many features. But I promptly learned this cheap base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send an email with their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices plunge virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every fixing trick, I could barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Career Coaching Playbook.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I might assume that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden fees, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge mistake. The disadvantages dramatically surpassed any advantages.
No software application is best, yet the large volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of vital features competently or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. But in knowledge, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life simpler, not extra difficult and untidy.
- Transparency builds count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys depend on.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Pleased assistance examines imply much less if too much concerns imply poor overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No single service can perfectly satisfy every unique company need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements normally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra doubtful of “as well good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the appeal of shiny new objects. The devices you use daily ought to gain trust through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.