As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to streamline procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Facebook Pixel.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always looking to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a desire come to life on paper. That would not desire a single service that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration 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 relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially eye-catching for services seeking to settle their technology stack.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with very little difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction points that I ‘d learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a couple of more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech facilities from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a summary of simply some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely international 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 performance throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large error. The issues began accumulating quickly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event tips, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating fine … till instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely pointless emails had actually been sent to customers who must NOT have actually gotten them. This took place three days straight, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the trouble continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any type of sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t work for my service. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows entailed digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely different sections. Moving between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Facebook Pixel
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the budget-friendly price for accessibility to numerous features. But I promptly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core performance. Suddenly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged every single time you send out an email via their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices drop nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or attempted every fixing technique, I could hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Facebook Pixel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden 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 an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, busted features, and horrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge blunder. The cons substantially outweighed any advantages.
No software is ideal, but the large quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to manage vital features capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. However in knowledge, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program commonly covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices should make your job life much easier, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys count on.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Pleased assistance assesses imply less if too much issues imply inadequate general usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can completely satisfy every special service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step renovations generally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be more cynical of “as well great to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the attraction of glossy new things. The devices you make use of daily need to make count on with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.