As an agency owner for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel For Software Companies.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a dream happened on paper. That would not want a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, hopefully you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it took care of everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small businesses maintain their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Usage website and social media sites kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting consumer relationships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically attractive for businesses wanting to combine their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with minimal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly transform your business … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a couple of more stress led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole technology infrastructure from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an introduction of just several of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as taking care of lost efficiency throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a better long-lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large mistake. The problems began piling up swiftly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing membership expirations and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely irrelevant emails had been sent to individuals who should NOT have actually received them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. However the problem lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, since the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t work for my service. I have countless get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low cost tag came with expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Software Companies
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the economical cost for accessibility to a lot of features. But I quickly discovered this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open prices plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out methods or tried every repairing method, I could barely push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Software Companies.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had awful engagement. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden charges, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial error. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any type of advantages.
No software program is excellent, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of vital functions capably or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough 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 gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around new software often covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life less complicated, not a lot more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins trust.
- Seek impartial reviews. Satisfied assistance evaluates imply much less if excessive problems suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary solution can perfectly meet every one-of-a-kind company demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental renovations normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be extra skeptical of “as well good to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily should gain count on via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.