As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to enhance operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Careers.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a dream happened on paper. That would not desire a single option that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, ideally you can pick up from my uncomfortable errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and customers receive the best messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and supporting client connections through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for businesses wanting to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned reliably with very little difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your organization … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few even more frustrations led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole tech framework from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of just a few of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– and also taking care of shed efficiency during the switch.
However eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a huge mistake. The concerns started piling up promptly, up until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion reminders, taking care of subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … till instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to customers who need to NOT have gotten them. This happened three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the problem persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they vaguely asserted “server problems” were responsible. However this explanation really did not make any type of sense, considering that the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally undesirable and just didn’t work for my business. I have thousands of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows included excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Careers
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the inexpensive price for accessibility to many features. But I swiftly learned this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core capability. Instantly my credit card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send an email via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open prices plunge nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing technique, I could barely push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Careers.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had horrible involvement. The only point I might think that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial blunder. The cons dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is excellent, yet the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage critical functions effectively or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around new software usually obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your work life simpler, not extra complex and untidy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Satisfied support evaluates indicate less if too much problems suggest poor total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary option can flawlessly satisfy every distinct organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step renovations generally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be a lot more cynical of “also great to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily must gain count on with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.