As an agency owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to simplify operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel Early Bird Tickets.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a desire happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and failing) to switch over to this popular new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, with any luck you can pick up from my unpleasant mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use site and social media kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for companies aiming to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with very little hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will change your organization … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few even more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood switching platforms was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole tech framework from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a summary of simply several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– not to mention dealing with lost performance throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting service for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge mistake. The issues started piling up promptly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event tips, handling membership expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unnecessary emails had been sent out to individuals who ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the problem persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly declared “web server issues” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any sense, because the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally undesirable and just really did not help my company. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in totally different sections. Moving in between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of overall, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low price tag featured pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Early Bird Tickets
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the affordable price for accessibility to a lot of features. However I rapidly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core functionality. Suddenly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every single time you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates plunge practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I could hardly nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Early Bird Tickets.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only thing I could think that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial mistake. The cons significantly outweighed any advantages.
No software application is excellent, yet the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage critical features capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. But in knowledge, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software program frequently covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life simpler, not a lot more complicated and untidy.
- Openness develops trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins count on.
- Look for honest testimonials. Delighted assistance assesses imply much less if too much concerns imply bad overall usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can completely satisfy every unique business need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more hesitant of “too good to be true” marketing cases and much less tempted by the attraction of glossy new objects. The tools you utilize daily must gain trust with openness and performance, not slick advertising.