As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel For Quality Leads.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire happened on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, with any luck you can learn from my painful errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and boost earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing client connections with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for organizations seeking to combine their tech pile.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly change your business … The grass usually looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing points that I would certainly learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a couple of more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew changing platforms was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole tech facilities from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an introduction of simply several of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of shed productivity during the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large mistake. The problems started accumulating rapidly, until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, handling subscription expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely pointless emails had actually been sent to individuals that need to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place three days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the problem lingered.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, because the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely unacceptable and simply didn’t benefit my organization. I have countless get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the small cost tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Quality Leads
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the economical rate for access to so many features. However I quickly discovered this cheap base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my bank card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every single time you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates plummet almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every troubleshooting technique, I could hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Quality Leads.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible involvement. The only point I can think 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.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden charges, busted features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive error. The cons considerably exceeded any type of benefits.
No software application is excellent, however the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to take care of crucial functions properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around new software typically covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life less complicated, not extra difficult and messy.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages depend on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Happy support assesses suggest less if extreme concerns imply poor overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can completely meet every unique service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step improvements generally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more skeptical of “too great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily must make trust via openness and performance, not slick advertising.