As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to enhance operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Cookies Policy.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always looking to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, ideally you can learn from my agonizing errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small companies maintain their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use website and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically attractive for services looking to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with minimal fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly change your business … The yard often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction points that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few even more aggravations led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was going to require migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire tech framework from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of just a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– not to mention dealing with shed productivity throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a huge error. The problems started piling up quickly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Security Issues & Several Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event reminders, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely pointless e-mails had been sent out to users that should NOT have obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they slightly claimed “web server problems” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any type of sense, because the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally inappropriate and just really did not work for my organization. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Cookies Policy
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the budget friendly rate for access to numerous features. But I swiftly learned this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core performance. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices plummet virtually over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every repairing method, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Cookies Policy.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had awful involvement. The only thing I might assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software program is ideal, but the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with essential features competently or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. However in hindsight, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software program commonly obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life much easier, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles destroys trust fund.
- Look for honest testimonials. Pleased support assesses indicate less if excessive problems imply bad total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can flawlessly fulfill every unique service requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step enhancements usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I discovered to be more cynical of “also great to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily must earn depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.