As an agency proprietor for over a years, I count on software and automation to improve operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel For Small Businesses.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my service, it looked like a desire come to life theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing client connections with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly appealing for companies looking to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with marginal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will revolutionize your business … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I understood switching platforms was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire technology infrastructure from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of simply a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– in addition to dealing with lost performance throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better long-lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge error. The issues started piling up promptly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be working fine … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to individuals that should NOT have obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they slightly declared “web server issues” were responsible. However this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely unacceptable and just really did not work for my business. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, private, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low price tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Small Businesses
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the affordable price for accessibility to numerous features. However I rapidly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to numerous bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending techniques or tried every fixing technique, I might hardly push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Small Businesses.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed costs, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge blunder. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is best, but the large quantity of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of essential features properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software usually covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life simpler, not extra complicated and messy.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages count on.
- Look for unbiased reviews. Happy assistance examines indicate less if extreme concerns imply inadequate total usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can perfectly fulfill every distinct business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step improvements usually surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In short, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “as well good to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily should make depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.