As an agency owner for over a years, I depend on software application and automation to improve operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Gamification.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire come to life on paper. That would not want a single solution that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, hopefully you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it managed everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media sites forms to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and increase revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client connections through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations aiming to consolidate their technology stack.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with marginal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the siren call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will certainly change your business … The turf typically looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing points that I ‘d found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a few even more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching systems was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire tech framework from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an introduction of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to managing shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large blunder. The issues started accumulating promptly, up until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided 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 sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, handling membership expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning fine … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unnecessary emails had actually been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have actually received them. This happened 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I anxiously attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. But the problem continued.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was completely unacceptable and simply didn’t benefit my company. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Moving between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the affordable price tag featured pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Gamification
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the affordable price for accessibility to many features. However I promptly discovered this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core capability. Suddenly my credit card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed each time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, yet simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices drop almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every repairing method, I could hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Gamification.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only point I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden fees, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge blunder. The cons substantially exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software program is best, yet the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle critical functions competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software often covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life easier, not much more complex and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Satisfied assistance evaluates mean much less if excessive issues imply inadequate total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental improvements typically exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I learned to be extra doubtful of “too excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny new things. The tools you make use of daily should earn trust fund via openness and performance, not slick advertising.