As a company owner for over a years, I count on software application and automation to enhance procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Marketplace.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business needs, with any luck you can gain from my painful mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require 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 job management option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist local business keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client partnerships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically appealing for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it just functioned reliably with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s discussing a brand-new tool that will transform your organization … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a couple of more stress led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing systems was going to call for moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire tech framework from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of just some of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– not to mention managing lost performance throughout the switch.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge mistake. The issues began piling up quickly, till it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I ran into.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … up until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to individuals that must NOT have actually received them. This happened three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble continued.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were responsible. But this description really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was totally inappropriate and just really did not benefit my organization. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low cost tag featured expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Marketplace
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the economical cost for access to numerous features. Yet I promptly learned this low-cost base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core capability. Suddenly my charge card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open rates plunge virtually over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing trick, I might hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Marketplace.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only point I could think that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, busted features, and horrible interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge mistake. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any type of benefits.
No software is excellent, however the large volume 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 take care of essential functions effectively or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. However in hindsight, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around new software typically obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life easier, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins trust.
- Look for objective evaluations. Pleased assistance examines indicate much less if too much problems indicate inadequate overall use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can perfectly fulfill every unique service requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements typically surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be much more unconvinced of “also great to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily should earn count on with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.