As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to streamline procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel For Marketing Agencies.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my company, it looked like a dream come to life on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we recommend.
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 setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to utilize and it managed whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting client partnerships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically appealing for organizations wanting to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it just functioned dependably with minimal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your business … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a few more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole technology infrastructure from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– as well as dealing with shed performance throughout the button.
But inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a big error. The problems began accumulating quickly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, handling subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be operating penalty … until all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unimportant e-mails had been sent out to individuals who must NOT have obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they slightly claimed “web server problems” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any feeling, because the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was totally unacceptable and simply didn’t benefit my company. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows included digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Moving between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Marketing Agencies
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the cost effective price for access to so many features. However I swiftly discovered this affordable base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core functionality. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send an email through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open prices drop virtually over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every repairing technique, I could barely push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Marketing Agencies.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only point I might think that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden fees, busted features, and terrible interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big error. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any benefits.
No software application is excellent, however the large volume of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical functions competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply 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 Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software commonly covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life easier, not a lot more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Pleased support reviews imply less if excessive concerns suggest bad total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can perfectly meet every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I learned to be much more skeptical of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and much less tempted by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you use daily must earn depend on through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.