As a company owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my focus GoHighLevel Chase Buckner.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a dream come true theoretically. Who would not want a single solution that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, ideally you can gain from my agonizing errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it managed everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business keep their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and customers receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer relationships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically eye-catching for services looking to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it just functioned reliably with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will transform your company … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction points that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a couple of more aggravations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole technology facilities from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of simply a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– as well as taking care of lost performance during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a big blunder. The concerns began accumulating quickly, until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, handling membership expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to customers who must NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the issue continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, since the mistakes continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was completely undesirable and just didn’t help my company. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Basic jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag included expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Chase Buckner
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the budget friendly rate for accessibility to a lot of features. But I swiftly learned this economical base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core capability. Suddenly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email via their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices plummet virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I could hardly nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Chase Buckner.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had terrible interaction. The only point I might assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden charges, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big blunder. The cons significantly exceeded any type of advantages.
No software program is best, however the large volume of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle vital functions competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software usually covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life easier, not a lot more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys trust.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Delighted support evaluates suggest much less if too much issues imply poor total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can completely fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements usually outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra cynical of “as well great to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily ought to earn count on via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.