As an agency owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to improve procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Klarna.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my service, it appeared like a desire happened theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, with any luck you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the right time. Usage site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing consumer relationships through effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially attractive for companies aiming to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with very little difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “glossy object syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will certainly change your organization … The yard typically looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, but a couple of more frustrations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood changing platforms was going to require moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology facilities from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an overview of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– and also managing shed efficiency during the button.
But inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a big blunder. The concerns began accumulating quickly, until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating fine … up until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely pointless emails had actually been sent out to users that must NOT have received them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. However the problem lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “server problems” were at fault. Yet this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, because the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely inappropriate and just really did not benefit my business. I have countless get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Simple tasks like editing workflows included excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Klarna
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the budget-friendly price for access to numerous features. Yet I promptly learned this economical base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my bank card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open prices plunge practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every fixing trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Klarna.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible involvement. The only thing I might assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big error. The cons substantially exceeded any advantages.
No software application is ideal, but the sheer volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical functions capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, 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 danger.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software often obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your job life much easier, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages depend on.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Pleased support reviews imply less if extreme issues suggest poor total functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary option can perfectly satisfy every unique organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements usually outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I learned to be much more doubtful of “too excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy new things. The devices you make use of daily need to earn depend on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.