As a company owner for over a years, I depend on software and automation to simplify operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Client Portal.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always aiming to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a desire become a reality on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and falling short) to change to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, with any luck you can gain from my excruciating mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting customer relationships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially attractive for companies aiming to combine their technology pile.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with very little fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your company … The lawn commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing points that I ‘d learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a few more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was going to require migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology framework from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a summary of simply several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– as well as taking care of shed performance during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a better long-lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a big error. The problems began accumulating rapidly, till it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I experienced.
Protection Issues & Many 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 consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely unimportant emails had actually been sent to customers who should NOT have obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I desperately attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the issue persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they slightly claimed “server issues” were at fault. But this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, since the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my service. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally undependable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of total, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Client Portal
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I rapidly discovered this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core performance. All of a sudden my credit card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every fixing method, I can barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Client Portal.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had horrible involvement. The only point I could believe that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big blunder. The cons significantly surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, yet the sheer volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical functions properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software application typically obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life easier, not more complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages depend on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Pleased assistance examines suggest less if extreme issues indicate inadequate total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can flawlessly meet every unique organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step enhancements commonly outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I found out to be more skeptical of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily ought to make trust with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.