As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to simplify procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Gift Cards.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable errors and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it managed everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients get the best messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing client connections with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically attractive for businesses aiming to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it simply functioned reliably with minimal hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy things disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your organization … The yard usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a couple of more stress led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I understood switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole tech framework from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a review of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing shed efficiency during the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large blunder. The issues started accumulating quickly, up until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the trouble continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally inappropriate and just didn’t work for my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and challenging.
Simple tasks like editing workflows included digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage overall, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Gift Cards
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the economical cost for accessibility to so many features. However I promptly discovered this economical base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged every time you send an email via their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices plummet almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every repairing method, I can hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Gift Cards.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had horrible interaction. The only point I might assume that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big blunder. The cons significantly exceeded any benefits.
No software program is excellent, yet the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of important features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program often covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life much easier, not much more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust.
- Look for objective testimonials. Pleased support examines imply much less if excessive problems indicate inadequate overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can perfectly meet every unique organization demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step improvements normally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “too excellent to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of shiny new objects. The devices you utilize daily need to make depend on through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.