As a company owner for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel Certified Directory.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a dream become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single option that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, ideally you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing client partnerships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially appealing for services wanting to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with marginal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the sensation: when every person’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your company … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing points that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a couple of more aggravations led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole technology framework from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an overview of simply some of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as dealing with lost productivity throughout the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The issues began accumulating promptly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion suggestions, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … until unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unnecessary emails had been sent to customers that need to NOT have received them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the issue lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of sense, because the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t work for my business. I have countless get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Certified Directory
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the budget friendly price for access to many features. But I rapidly discovered this cheap base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every single time you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending techniques or attempted every repairing technique, I might barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Certified Directory.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only point I could think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed costs, broken features, and horrible interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial mistake. The cons substantially surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software program is best, however the large quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with essential functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it educated me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program commonly obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life much easier, not extra complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues damages count on.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Satisfied support assesses suggest less if excessive problems suggest bad general usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step renovations usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I learned to be much more cynical of “as well excellent to be true” marketing cases and less lured by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you utilize daily ought to gain depend on with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.