As a firm owner for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to streamline procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Favicon.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. Who would not want a solitary service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this preferred new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, ideally you can gain from my uncomfortable blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the right messages at the right time. Usage site and social media kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 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 a comprehensive customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client connections with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations wanting to combine their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply worked dependably with minimal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will revolutionize your business … The yard frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a few even more stress led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech framework from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of simply a few of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as dealing with lost performance throughout the switch.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The concerns started piling up rapidly, till it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion reminders, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to individuals who must NOT have actually received them. This happened three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I anxiously attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the issue persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were responsible. However this description really did not make any type of sense, given that the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t benefit my service. I have thousands of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various areas. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage total, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low price tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Favicon
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the cost effective price for access to so many features. But I quickly learned this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core capability. Suddenly my bank card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged every single time you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to numerous dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I can barely push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Favicon.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had terrible engagement. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge blunder. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software program is ideal, yet the large quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle essential functions properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software program usually obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life easier, not much more complex and untidy.
- Openness constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages depend on.
- Seek honest testimonials. Delighted support examines indicate less if extreme issues imply bad general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can perfectly fulfill every distinct business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental improvements commonly surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I found out to be extra unconvinced of “also excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny new things. The tools you utilize daily should earn depend on with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.