As a company owner for over a years, I depend on software and automation to streamline procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Multi-Step Form.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my organization, it looked like a dream become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, with any luck you can gain from my unpleasant errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require 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 project management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist local business maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Usage website and social networks forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing consumer connections with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically appealing for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with very little hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s talking about a brand-new device that will change your company … The yard often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a couple of even more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology facilities from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a review of just a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– and also managing lost performance throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large mistake. The problems began piling up swiftly, up until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Security Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, handling subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent to customers who ought to NOT have gotten them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the problem continued.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were to blame. But this description really did not make any feeling, because the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely undesirable and simply didn’t help my organization. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in completely various sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low cost tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Multi-Step Form
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the cost effective rate for access to numerous features. Yet I rapidly learned this economical base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core capability. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send out an email through their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open prices drop virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting method, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Multi-Step Form.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only thing I can think 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.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden fees, broken features, and terrible interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge blunder. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any type of benefits.
No software application is excellent, but the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to deal with essential functions effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program commonly covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life easier, not extra complicated and messy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek objective reviews. Happy assistance evaluates imply less if too much issues indicate poor general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can completely meet every special company demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step renovations usually exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be extra cynical of “too great to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily ought to gain depend on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.