As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Google Reviews.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a desire come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a solitary service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, with any luck you can pick up from my agonizing blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help local business maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the right messages at the right time. Usage site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and supporting consumer partnerships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for businesses seeking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with marginal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the siren call of “shiny things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will reinvent your business … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few even more aggravations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology facilities from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of just several of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– not to mention managing lost performance throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a huge mistake. The concerns began accumulating quickly, up until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, managing membership expirations and much more.
Everything appeared to be working fine … until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 completely irrelevant emails had been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. But the problem continued.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were at fault. However this description really did not make any kind of feeling, considering that the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely inappropriate and just really did not benefit my service. I have countless get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and challenging.
Easy tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of overall, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Google Reviews
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the economical rate for access to a lot of features. Yet I promptly learned this economical base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plummet nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every repairing method, I can hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Google Reviews.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed fees, broken features, and awful 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 disadvantages drastically surpassed any type of benefits.
No software application is ideal, but the sheer volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with vital functions competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software typically covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your job life much easier, not more challenging and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins trust.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Pleased support assesses mean less if too much concerns indicate inadequate overall use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can completely fulfill every special organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements commonly surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “too great to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the attraction of glossy new items. The devices you utilize daily ought to earn depend on through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.