As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Email Signature.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a dream happened theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, ideally you can gain from my painful errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing consumer connections through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically appealing for services wanting to settle their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned reliably with very little difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your business … The turf frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a couple of more disappointments led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole tech infrastructure from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a review of simply several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing lost efficiency throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge blunder. The issues started piling up quickly, until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … till all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unimportant e-mails had been sent to customers that need to NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. But the issue persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they vaguely asserted “server problems” were responsible. Yet this explanation really did not make any sense, considering that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely unacceptable and simply really did not benefit my company. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows involved digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, private, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag came with expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Email Signature
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the budget friendly cost for accessibility to many features. However I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core capability. Suddenly my charge card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send an email with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates drop almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every troubleshooting method, I might barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Email Signature.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had awful interaction. The only point I could assume that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden costs, broken features, and awful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge error. The cons considerably surpassed any advantages.
No software application is excellent, however the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with important functions capably or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around new software application usually covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life less complicated, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys count on.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Happy assistance examines mean much less if too much problems indicate bad overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary remedy can perfectly fulfill every unique organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step improvements usually exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra hesitant of “also excellent to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily ought to gain count on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.