As a company proprietor for over a years, I count on software and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel Freelancer Plan.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my service, it looked like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this preferred new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, with any luck you can pick up from my agonizing blunders and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist local business maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and customers receive the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and rise profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing consumer connections through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically eye-catching for companies seeking to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with very little difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly transform your business … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a few even more disappointments led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching over systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire tech facilities from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an overview of just several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as taking care of shed productivity during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a big blunder. The issues began piling up promptly, until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event reminders, handling membership expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally unnecessary emails had actually been sent to users who need to NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I frantically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the trouble persisted.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any type of feeling, since the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was totally unacceptable and just didn’t help my business. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item all set for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Freelancer Plan
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget friendly cost for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I quickly discovered this economical base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send out an email with their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every repairing method, I could hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Freelancer Plan.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had awful interaction. The only point I might assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial blunder. The cons considerably surpassed any type of benefits.
No software is excellent, but the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to take care of critical functions properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. But in hindsight, it taught me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around new software frequently obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life much easier, not a lot more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages trust.
- Seek objective reviews. Delighted support evaluates mean less if too much issues indicate poor total usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind company demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily ought to make depend on via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.