As a firm owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my focus GoHighLevel Knowledge Base.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always looking to streamline and scale my service, it seemed like a desire become a reality on paper. Who would not want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, ideally you can gain from my agonizing mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the right messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing client partnerships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for organizations seeking to consolidate their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with very little fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The turf typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower friction factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a couple of even more frustrations led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech framework from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a review of just some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– as well as managing shed efficiency during the button.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-lasting solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge error. The concerns started piling up rapidly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … up until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to users that ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were responsible. But this description didn’t make any type of feeling, given that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my service. I have thousands of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complex.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Knowledge Base
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the cost effective rate for access to so many features. But I swiftly discovered this cheap base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core functionality. All of a sudden my bank card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged whenever you send out an email via their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to numerous dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plummet nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every fixing method, I can barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Knowledge Base.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only thing I can believe that would be triggering 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 crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive error. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any type of advantages.
No software program is ideal, but the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to deal with crucial functions effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in hindsight, it educated me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software commonly covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life much easier, not much more challenging and untidy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins count on.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Happy support reviews mean less if extreme problems indicate bad total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary remedy can perfectly meet every special service requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I found out to be a lot more hesitant of “too great to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily need to make count on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.