As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to improve operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel Conversations.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a dream happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, with any luck you can learn from my excruciating mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small businesses keep their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients get the right messages at the right time. Use web site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting consumer connections with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically attractive for companies wanting to combine their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with marginal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new device that will change your service … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few more frustrations led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of simply a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– and also handling lost performance during the button.
But inevitably, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a large error. The issues started accumulating promptly, until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, managing membership expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be functioning fine … till instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent out to customers that ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, because the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally undesirable and simply really did not work for my service. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unreliable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low price tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Conversations
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the economical cost for access to so many features. Yet I swiftly learned this inexpensive base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core performance. Suddenly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates drop virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting method, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Conversations.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had awful involvement. The only point I can think that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed costs, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge error. The cons drastically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software application is perfect, yet the sheer quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to manage important features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. But in hindsight, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program usually covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life much easier, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds depend on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys count on.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Delighted assistance evaluates mean much less if excessive concerns suggest bad overall functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can flawlessly meet every one-of-a-kind company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be more hesitant of “too excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny new things. The tools you use daily should make depend on through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.