As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software program and automation to simplify operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Course Builder.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, with any luck you can gain from my unpleasant errors and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small businesses keep their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media sites forms to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing client connections with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly appealing for organizations looking to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with very little difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will certainly reinvent your company … The lawn frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a few even more stress led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole tech framework from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of just several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– and also dealing with lost efficiency during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel providing a better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a big error. The issues started piling up rapidly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, managing membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating penalty … until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally irrelevant emails had actually been sent to customers who should NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. However the trouble continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they slightly declared “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any type of feeling, because the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my service. I have thousands of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the affordable price tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Course Builder
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the budget-friendly cost for access to many features. Yet I quickly learned this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core capability. Suddenly my credit card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plunge almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I can hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Course Builder.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had horrible interaction. The only thing I might assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big mistake. The cons significantly exceeded any benefits.
No software application is best, however the sheer quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage important functions competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. However in hindsight, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application commonly obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your work life less complicated, not extra challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins trust fund.
- Look for impartial reviews. Pleased support reviews mean less if excessive issues indicate inadequate general usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can completely satisfy every unique business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements typically surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be extra cynical of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily should earn depend on through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.