As an agency owner for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to simplify procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Demo Video.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a desire become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and failing) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, ideally you can gain from my agonizing blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies maintain their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and boost earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically eye-catching for companies aiming to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new tool that will change your service … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I would certainly learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few even more irritations led me to think possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– and also handling shed productivity during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big error. The concerns started accumulating swiftly, up until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I came across.
Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, handling membership expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had been sent to customers who ought to NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the issue lingered.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. Yet this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, given that the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally unacceptable and just really did not help my company. I have thousands of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle general, private, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low price tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Demo Video
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the economical rate for access to numerous features. However I quickly learned this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core performance. Suddenly my credit card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending methods or attempted every repairing method, I might barely push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Demo Video.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only thing I might believe that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed charges, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge mistake. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any type of advantages.
No software is best, yet the sheer quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle essential functions capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. Yet in knowledge, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software application usually obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life easier, not much more complicated and messy.
- Openness builds count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust.
- Seek unbiased reviews. Pleased support evaluates indicate much less if extreme problems suggest poor total usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary remedy can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind service requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I discovered to be more doubtful of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the attraction of shiny new things. The tools you utilize daily ought to make count on with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.