As a company proprietor for over a years, I depend on software application and automation to improve operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Instagram Shop.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my company, it looked like a desire come true on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, ideally you can pick up from my painful mistakes and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small companies keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and increase revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically appealing for services aiming to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with very little difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your business … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a few more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire tech facilities from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply a few of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning everything over– not to mention dealing with shed performance throughout the switch.
But inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The issues started accumulating promptly, till it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I encountered.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, handling membership expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be operating fine … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent out to users that ought to NOT have gotten them. This occurred three days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, since the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally undesirable and just really did not work for my service. I have countless contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complex.
Simple jobs like editing workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the affordable price tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Instagram Shop
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the affordable cost for access to many features. However I swiftly learned this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic costs for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates plunge almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every repairing trick, I might barely push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Instagram Shop.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had awful engagement. The only thing I might think that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, broken features, and terrible interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big blunder. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any type of advantages.
No software program is ideal, but the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with vital functions properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it showed me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software usually obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life less complicated, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages count on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Satisfied support evaluates imply less if too much problems suggest inadequate total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step improvements typically surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I found out to be a lot more doubtful of “also good to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the appeal of glossy brand-new items. The tools you use daily should gain count on with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.