As a company proprietor for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel Extended Trial.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a dream come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, ideally you can learn from my painful mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it handled everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the right messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social networks types to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and supporting consumer connections via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations aiming to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with very little hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new device that will change your business … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might lower friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a few more stress led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire tech framework from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of just some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– not to mention handling lost productivity during the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large mistake. The concerns began accumulating promptly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, managing subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … till suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent out to users that should NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the issue persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they slightly declared “web server issues” were to blame. Yet this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, because the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was totally undesirable and just didn’t work for my service. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag included pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Extended Trial
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the inexpensive rate for access to many features. However I rapidly discovered this cheap base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open prices drop virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Extended Trial.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had awful engagement. The only point I could assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and awful interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a massive error. The disadvantages considerably outweighed any benefits.
No software is best, yet the large volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of important features properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. But in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing hype around new software application commonly covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life easier, not more complex and messy.
- Openness develops depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages trust.
- Seek honest evaluations. Pleased assistance evaluates indicate less if excessive issues suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind business demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step improvements normally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Basically, I found out to be more doubtful of “too good to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The devices you utilize daily must gain trust via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.