As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to simplify procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Gravity Forms.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a dream become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to change to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, hopefully you can pick up from my agonizing blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client 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 clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing consumer relationships via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for services aiming to settle their technology stack.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with minimal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny item syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will change your organization … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a few more frustrations led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech infrastructure from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an overview of simply a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to dealing with shed efficiency throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The issues started piling up swiftly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Protection Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had been sent out to customers who need to NOT have gotten them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I anxiously attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server concerns” were at fault. But this description really did not make any type of feeling, given that the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally undesirable and just didn’t work for my organization. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low cost tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Gravity Forms
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the budget friendly rate for access to many features. Yet I promptly learned this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices drop almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every repairing technique, I could hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Gravity Forms.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had horrible engagement. The only thing I can believe 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 crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big error. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any type of benefits.
No software is excellent, yet the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of essential functions competently or believe a supplier 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 difficult contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life simpler, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins depend on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Pleased support examines suggest less if excessive problems suggest inadequate overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can perfectly fulfill every unique organization need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In other words, I learned to be much more cynical of “as well excellent to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the attraction of glossy new items. The devices you use daily should earn trust fund via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.