As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to improve operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighLevel For Coaches.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a desire become a reality on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this preferred new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small businesses maintain their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the right messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client relationships via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for businesses seeking to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with very little fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s talking about a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your company … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a few more stress led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology framework from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of simply some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– and also managing shed productivity during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a big mistake. The problems started piling up promptly, till it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, handling subscription expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … till instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the problem lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation didn’t make any feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely unacceptable and simply really did not work for my organization. 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 delicate customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in totally various sections. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage total, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Coaches
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the affordable price for accessibility to a lot of features. But I quickly learned this cheap base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates plunge almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending methods or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Coaches.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible involvement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant mistake. The disadvantages dramatically surpassed any benefits.
No software program is excellent, however the sheer volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to manage important features properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program usually obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life less complicated, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys count on.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Pleased support examines mean much less if excessive issues suggest inadequate overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can completely meet every unique service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I learned to be more cynical of “also great to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the allure of shiny new items. The tools you make use of daily should earn trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.