As a firm owner for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to simplify procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Custom Audience.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly wanting to streamline and scale my company, it felt like a dream come true on paper. That would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, ideally you can gain from my excruciating blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration 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 happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it handled whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers receive the best messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically appealing for services looking to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it simply functioned reliably with marginal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “glossy object syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will change your service … The grass typically looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a couple of even more disappointments led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole technology facilities from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of just several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– and also taking care of lost productivity during the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a huge blunder. The problems began accumulating swiftly, until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, managing subscription expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to users that ought to NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the trouble continued.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they vaguely claimed “server problems” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any kind of sense, since the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely inappropriate and simply didn’t help my business. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and difficult.
Simple tasks like editing workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Custom Audience
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the inexpensive rate for access to numerous features. But I rapidly learned this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core performance. Suddenly my charge card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged each time you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to numerous bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however just 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 email open prices plummet virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out practices or tried every repairing method, I can barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Custom Audience.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I might think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a huge blunder. The cons drastically outweighed any benefits.
No software application is ideal, but the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital functions effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software commonly obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life much easier, not extra challenging and messy.
- Transparency develops count on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys trust fund.
- Seek objective evaluations. Happy assistance examines mean much less if extreme issues suggest bad total functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can perfectly fulfill every one-of-a-kind service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements generally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I learned to be extra doubtful of “too good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less tempted by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The tools you utilize daily must gain count on via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.