As an agency owner for over a years, I depend on software application and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Make.com.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a dream come to life theoretically. Who would not want a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, ideally you can gain from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it handled everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small businesses maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the right time. Use web site and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for services looking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with very little hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren call of “glossy object disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly change your business … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing points that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few more stress led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood changing systems was going to require moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech framework from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an introduction of just some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention taking care of lost productivity during the button.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a better long-term option for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a big mistake. The issues began piling up rapidly, until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I ran into.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, handling membership expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely irrelevant emails had been sent to users that should NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the issue persisted.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they slightly declared “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not help my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low price tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Make.com
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the budget friendly rate for access to numerous features. Yet I promptly discovered this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open rates plunge nearly over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Make.com.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only point I could believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed charges, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The cons considerably surpassed any type of advantages.
No software program is best, however the large volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle critical features competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the tough call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around new software program usually covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life simpler, not more challenging and messy.
- Transparency develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages depend on.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Satisfied assistance evaluates imply much less if excessive issues indicate inadequate general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single remedy can flawlessly satisfy every special organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step renovations commonly outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I found out to be more hesitant of “also good to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the allure of shiny new items. The tools you make use of daily need to make depend on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.