As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to simplify procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel LevelUp Day.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a desire happened theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this preferred new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, with any luck you can learn from my painful errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers receive the best messages at the right time. Use website and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing customer relationships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for services seeking to consolidate their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with minimal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will change your company … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I ‘d learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a couple of more stress led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire tech framework from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a summary of simply some of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention dealing with lost performance during the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big error. The concerns started piling up rapidly, up until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating penalty … up until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had been sent to customers who need to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. But the problem persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, given that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of calls relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complicated.
Easy jobs like editing workflows involved excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various areas. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag came with expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel LevelUp Day
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the cost effective price for accessibility to so many features. Yet I quickly discovered this cheap base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core performance. Instantly my credit card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates drop almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending methods or tried every troubleshooting technique, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel LevelUp Day.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only thing I could believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, busted features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge blunder. The cons significantly surpassed any type of benefits.
No software application is excellent, but the sheer volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to take care of essential features effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software typically obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life simpler, not more complicated and untidy.
- Openness builds depend on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues damages trust fund.
- Look for objective testimonials. Satisfied assistance assesses mean much less if too much problems indicate poor total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can perfectly fulfill every unique business requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step improvements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be more skeptical of “also excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny new things. The tools you use daily should earn depend on with openness and performance, not slick advertising.