As an agency owner for over a years, I depend on software and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Ecommerce.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, hopefully you can gain from my painful blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers receive the best messages at the right time. Usage website and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing consumer connections with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly appealing for services wanting to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with minimal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will reinvent your service … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction points that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a couple of more stress led me to assume perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was going to need moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire technology infrastructure from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of just some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing lost productivity throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a huge mistake. The problems began accumulating quickly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be functioning fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 completely irrelevant emails had been sent to customers who should NOT have received them. This took place three days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. However the problem continued.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server problems” were at fault. However this description really did not make any kind of sense, since the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally inappropriate and just really did not work for my business. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, private, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low cost tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Ecommerce
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the inexpensive price for accessibility to so many features. But I promptly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed each time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates drop virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I could barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Ecommerce.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had horrible involvement. The only point I might believe that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, damaged features, and awful interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant blunder. The cons significantly outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software program is best, however the sheer quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle vital features competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. But in hindsight, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program typically obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life less complicated, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys trust fund.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines indicate less if extreme concerns suggest bad general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can perfectly fulfill every special business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental renovations commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I learned to be much more hesitant of “as well great to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of glossy new objects. The tools you make use of daily should earn depend on with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.