As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Email Pricing.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a dream become a reality on paper. Who would not desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization requirements, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help local business keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social media sites forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting customer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially attractive for companies aiming to combine their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with very little fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no 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 attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly revolutionize your service … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few more aggravations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I understood changing platforms was going to need moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole technology framework from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a review of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– as well as dealing with shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a huge mistake. The problems began piling up rapidly, until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, handling subscription expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be working penalty … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 completely unimportant e-mails had been sent to users that need to NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the problem persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, because the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my service. I have countless calls relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Easy tasks like editing workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage total, individual, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low price tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Email Pricing
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the cost effective cost for access to so many features. Yet I quickly discovered this inexpensive base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic fees for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, yet 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 thoroughly supported e-mail open rates plummet almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a worthless 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every repairing technique, I can barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Email Pricing.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had terrible interaction. The only thing I can assume that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge mistake. The cons substantially exceeded any advantages.
No software is ideal, but the large quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage vital functions properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software program commonly covers larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life less complicated, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins depend on.
- Look for honest evaluations. Delighted support evaluates suggest less if extreme concerns suggest inadequate overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can completely fulfill every distinct service requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be much more hesitant of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and much less lured by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The devices you use daily ought to earn trust fund via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.