As a company proprietor for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to streamline procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Lead Forms.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always aiming to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a desire come to life on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, with any luck you can learn from my agonizing errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it managed whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist local business keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers get the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing client relationships through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly appealing for companies aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
Essentially, it just functioned reliably with very little hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
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 hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your service … The yard often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing points that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few even more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood changing systems was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole tech framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an overview of just a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as dealing with lost efficiency throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better long-lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large blunder. The problems began piling up promptly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, handling membership expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … till unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to customers that must NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals daily.
I anxiously tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. But the trouble lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they slightly declared “server problems” were at fault. But this description really did not make any sense, because the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally inappropriate and just didn’t work for my service. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in totally different sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Lead Forms
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the cost effective price for access to a lot of features. However I swiftly learned this cheap base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices drop virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out techniques or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Lead Forms.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only point I might think that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial error. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any advantages.
No software is ideal, however the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with vital features competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software typically covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your job life much easier, not a lot more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins depend on.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Delighted assistance examines indicate much less if extreme problems indicate poor overall functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can perfectly satisfy every unique business requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental enhancements typically exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “too great to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily should make depend on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.