As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to enhance operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Lead Scoring.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it looked like a dream become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, with any luck you can gain from my painful mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small companies keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly appealing for services looking to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with very little fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will transform your business … The turf typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few more stress led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire tech facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– and also taking care of shed performance during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a huge error. The concerns started accumulating quickly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, managing membership expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally pointless e-mails had actually been sent to users that should NOT have actually gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they slightly declared “web server issues” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, since the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my service. I have countless contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows included excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of general, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag featured expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Lead Scoring
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I rapidly learned this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates drop almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out techniques or attempted every fixing method, I might barely push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Lead Scoring.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had horrible interaction. The only thing I can think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed charges, busted features, and awful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant error. The cons considerably surpassed any advantages.
No software application is best, however the large quantity of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to handle crucial features effectively or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the tough call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software program usually covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your work life easier, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust fund.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Delighted support examines imply much less if extreme concerns suggest bad total usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can completely satisfy every special company requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I learned to be more cynical of “too great to be real” marketing claims and less attracted by the attraction of shiny new things. The devices you use daily need to earn trust fund via openness and performance, not slick advertising.