As a company proprietor for over a years, I depend on software and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Hidden Fees.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a dream become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization requirements, ideally you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and clients get the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and boost earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing client partnerships through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for businesses aiming to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your service … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few more aggravations led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire tech facilities from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of just some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of lost efficiency throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The concerns began piling up quickly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Protection Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally irrelevant emails had actually been sent to customers who must NOT have gotten them. This happened three days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. But the issue persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely undesirable and simply really did not benefit my company. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in completely various areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage total, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Hidden Fees
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the inexpensive price for access to so many features. However I swiftly discovered this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open prices drop practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every repairing method, I can barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Hidden Fees.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had dreadful engagement. The only point I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed costs, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a substantial mistake. The cons drastically exceeded any type of benefits.
No software is perfect, yet the sheer volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to handle critical functions effectively or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in hindsight, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software application often covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life easier, not more complicated and messy.
- Transparency builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys depend on.
- Look for objective evaluations. Happy assistance reviews suggest less if extreme problems imply inadequate overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can perfectly satisfy every unique business requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental enhancements normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be a lot more hesitant of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily ought to earn trust fund via openness and performance, not slick advertising.