As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel For Local Service Providers.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner always wanting to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a dream come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this preferred new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing client partnerships through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically appealing for companies aiming to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with minimal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your company … The grass typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a couple of more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized changing systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– not to mention handling shed performance during the button.
But inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel providing a much better lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge error. The issues started accumulating promptly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be working penalty … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely irrelevant emails had been sent to customers who need to NOT have obtained them. This took place three days straight, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I frantically attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. But the trouble persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any sense, given that the mistakes continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t help my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, individual, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Local Service Providers
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the inexpensive rate for access to a lot of features. Yet I quickly learned this affordable base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core capability. Instantly my charge card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates drop nearly over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every fixing trick, I can hardly push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Local Service Providers.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only point I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive mistake. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software application is excellent, however the sheer volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of important functions capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application frequently covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your work life easier, not extra difficult and untidy.
- Openness builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins trust fund.
- Seek honest evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines imply less if excessive concerns indicate poor overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single remedy can flawlessly satisfy every distinct business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental renovations commonly outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I learned to be a lot more unconvinced of “also great to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you use daily must make count on through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.