As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to enhance operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Inventory Management.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it seemed like a dream come to life on paper. Who would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, ideally you can gain from my excruciating mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it managed everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies maintain their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Use website and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting consumer relationships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for organizations looking to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with minimal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will certainly reinvent your company … The yard often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a couple of more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to taking care of shed efficiency during the button.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a large blunder. The problems started accumulating quickly, till it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event reminders, handling membership expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be working penalty … till instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant emails had been sent out to users who must NOT have gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I hysterically attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any feeling, since the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t help my business. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complex.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag included pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Inventory Management
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the budget-friendly price for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I quickly discovered this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic fees for core capability. Instantly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an email through their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open rates plummet almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every repairing method, I can hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Inventory Management.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had horrible interaction. The only point I can believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, broken features, and horrible interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a substantial mistake. The cons substantially exceeded any benefits.
No software is best, yet the sheer quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of critical features capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. However in knowledge, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software commonly covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life easier, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues damages trust.
- Look for honest testimonials. Delighted assistance evaluates mean much less if extreme concerns suggest poor overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can completely fulfill every special organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step improvements generally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be much more cynical of “also good to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The devices you use daily must gain count on with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.