As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to improve operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Getwsodo.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always looking to simplify and scale my company, it seemed like a dream come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, ideally you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing customer connections with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially eye-catching for services aiming to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply worked dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your business … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a couple of more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood changing systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology facilities from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a review of simply a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large blunder. The concerns started piling up promptly, till it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have actually received them. This took place three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the problem continued.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “server problems” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of sense, given that the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally undesirable and just really did not help my company. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Getwsodo
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the budget-friendly rate for access to so many features. However I rapidly discovered this cheap base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send out an email with their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open rates plummet nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every repairing technique, I could barely push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Getwsodo.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible engagement. The only thing I could think that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and awful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant blunder. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any type of advantages.
No software is perfect, however the sheer volume of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to manage critical functions properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application typically covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life less complicated, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages count on.
- Look for objective reviews. Pleased support reviews mean much less if too much problems indicate inadequate overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly meet every unique business requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental enhancements typically exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I found out to be extra skeptical of “too excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily need to earn depend on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.