As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to simplify procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel MRR Calculator.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a dream come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation demands.
I found Keap user-friendly to utilize and it took care of everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the best messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing consumer partnerships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially attractive for organizations wanting to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with very little hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a new device that will certainly revolutionize your service … The turf frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a few even more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– not to mention managing lost performance during the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large mistake. The problems started piling up quickly, up until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion reminders, managing membership expirations and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating fine … until unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent out to individuals that should NOT have actually gotten them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the problem continued.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were responsible. However this explanation didn’t make any feeling, since the mistakes proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was completely undesirable and just didn’t work for my organization. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different sections. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel MRR Calculator
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the inexpensive price for access to so many features. But I quickly discovered this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core capability. All of a sudden my bank card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plunge almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing trick, I might hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel MRR Calculator.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had terrible interaction. The only thing I could think that would be creating 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 issues, concealed fees, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big mistake. The cons drastically surpassed any advantages.
No software program is ideal, however the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to deal with vital features properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software program frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life less complicated, not much more complicated and messy.
- Openness builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys depend on.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Happy support reviews mean much less if extreme problems imply inadequate general functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can completely satisfy every unique organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step renovations normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I found out to be more doubtful of “too good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of shiny new items. The devices you utilize daily should earn depend on through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.