As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Group Buy.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire happened theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, hopefully you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Use website and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing client partnerships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for companies wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked accurately with very little fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your company … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a couple of even more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew switching systems was going to require migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech framework from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply some of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to taking care of lost performance during the button.
However ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large error. The issues started accumulating swiftly, till it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … up until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unnecessary emails had actually been sent to users who should NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. However the issue lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server problems” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, given that the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally unacceptable and simply really did not help my service. I have thousands of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag included expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Group Buy
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the inexpensive cost for access to many features. Yet I quickly learned this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core performance. Instantly my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged every single time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to numerous dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every fixing method, I can barely push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Group Buy.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had awful engagement. The only point I might believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge blunder. The cons considerably exceeded any type of benefits.
No software application is ideal, but the large volume of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage critical functions properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program often covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life simpler, not much more difficult and untidy.
- Openness constructs count on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues damages trust fund.
- Look for objective testimonials. Pleased support evaluates imply less if extreme concerns suggest poor overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly fulfill every one-of-a-kind company need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements typically exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In other words, I learned to be much more doubtful of “as well great to be true” marketing claims and much less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The devices you use daily must gain trust fund through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.