As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software application and automation to streamline procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighLevel For Amateurs.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a dream become a reality theoretically. Who would not want a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, with any luck you can learn from my unpleasant mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage website and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially appealing for organizations aiming to settle their technology pile.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with minimal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your service … The turf typically looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction points that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, yet a couple of more frustrations led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology framework from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of simply a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling shed productivity during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues began piling up rapidly, up until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, taking care of subscription expirations and much 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 irrelevant emails had actually been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the problem continued.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, given that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my service. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complex.
Straightforward jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in completely different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane 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 clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Amateurs
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the budget friendly rate for access to numerous features. However I quickly discovered this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card declarations had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out techniques or attempted every fixing technique, I could hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Amateurs.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only point I can assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden fees, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big mistake. The cons considerably surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software application is excellent, however the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with essential functions competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing buzz around new software usually obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life less complicated, not a lot more challenging and untidy.
- Openness develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys count on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Delighted assistance assesses imply much less if excessive concerns imply poor general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can flawlessly fulfill every special organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental renovations normally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I learned to be extra hesitant of “too excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy new things. The devices you utilize daily should make count on via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.