As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel Membership Subscription.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a dream come true theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, hopefully you can learn from my agonizing blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers receive the right messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting client connections with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for services seeking to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it simply functioned accurately with very little difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your service … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower friction factors that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a few even more stress led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire technology infrastructure from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of just some of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– and also handling lost productivity during the button.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a huge mistake. The concerns began piling up promptly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … till suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had been sent out to customers who need to NOT have obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. But the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “web server problems” were to blame. However this description really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely inappropriate and simply didn’t benefit my organization. I have thousands of calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Relocating between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low cost tag came with expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Membership Subscription
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the cost effective cost for access to many features. But I quickly learned this affordable base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core functionality. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices plunge almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Membership Subscription.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I might think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a huge mistake. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any type of advantages.
No software is excellent, however the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of vital features competently or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. But in hindsight, it showed me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application frequently covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your job life less complicated, not a lot more challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys trust fund.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Happy assistance evaluates imply less if excessive issues suggest bad general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can completely meet every distinct service requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental enhancements usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more doubtful of “too good to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of glossy new items. The tools you make use of daily must gain depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.