As an agency proprietor for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to streamline operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Kelsi Navalta.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always looking to streamline and scale my organization, it looked like a desire come to life on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable errors and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it handled whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing consumer connections through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically appealing for organizations seeking to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with minimal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will transform your business … The turf usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might lower friction points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a few more stress led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology infrastructure from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of just several of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– and also handling lost performance throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large mistake. The issues started piling up rapidly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I encountered.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event pointers, handling subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent to customers that ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the problem persisted.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any type of sense, given that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my company. I have countless get in touches with 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 customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage total, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the small cost tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Kelsi Navalta
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the economical rate for accessibility to so many features. Yet I swiftly learned this affordable base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core performance. Suddenly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email via their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open prices plunge almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every repairing trick, I can barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Kelsi Navalta.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had awful involvement. The only thing I might think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge error. The cons substantially outweighed any advantages.
No software is ideal, yet the large quantity of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to manage essential functions properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. However in knowledge, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around new software usually obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life simpler, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek objective evaluations. Delighted assistance reviews imply less if excessive concerns imply bad total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can flawlessly meet every unique service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental renovations normally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra cynical of “as well great to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The tools you make use of daily ought to earn trust fund with openness and performance, not slick advertising.