As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to enhance operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel Founder.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always wanting to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist local business keep their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the best messages at the right time. Usage website and social media sites kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly appealing for companies wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with marginal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your service … The lawn often looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, yet a few more frustrations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I understood switching platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire tech facilities from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of simply some of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– as well as managing lost efficiency throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a far better lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The problems began piling up rapidly, till it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be working fine … till instantly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unimportant emails had been sent to users that should NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the problem continued.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “server issues” were responsible. However this explanation didn’t make any feeling, because the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was totally inappropriate and just really did not benefit my service. I have thousands of calls relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and difficult.
Easy tasks like editing workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various sections. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle general, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low price tag featured pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Founder
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the cost effective cost for access to so many features. Yet I promptly discovered this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every fixing trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Founder.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I can think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed charges, broken features, and horrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge mistake. The cons considerably surpassed any benefits.
No software application is best, yet the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical features competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program typically obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life easier, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins trust fund.
- Look for honest reviews. Delighted support evaluates mean less if excessive concerns suggest inadequate overall functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can flawlessly fulfill every unique company need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step renovations generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I discovered to be extra doubtful of “also great to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The tools you utilize daily need to gain depend on via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.