As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software application and automation to streamline operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Invoicing.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a dream come true on paper. Who would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help local business keep their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage website and social media sites types to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing client relationships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially attractive for services looking to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You know the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will transform your business … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing points that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a couple of more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood changing systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire technology facilities from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an introduction of just several of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention managing shed performance during the button.
However ultimately, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large error. The problems began piling up promptly, till it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, handling membership expirations and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to users who ought to NOT have actually received them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I desperately attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the issue continued.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any feeling, since the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely inappropriate and just didn’t help my business. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in completely different sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle general, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low price tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Invoicing
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the cost effective cost for access to many features. But I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core capability. All of a sudden my bank card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send out an email via their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plummet virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every repairing technique, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Invoicing.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible engagement. The only point I might believe that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a substantial mistake. The cons considerably surpassed any benefits.
No software program is best, yet the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of essential functions capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application typically obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life simpler, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys trust fund.
- Look for objective testimonials. Pleased assistance evaluates imply much less if extreme issues indicate inadequate general usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can completely satisfy every special company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental improvements normally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more doubtful of “also good to be true” marketing claims and much less attracted by the attraction of shiny new items. The devices you use daily must gain trust through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.