As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I count on software and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Namecheap.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. Who would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it handled everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use website and social media sites forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and increase revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing consumer connections via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly attractive for services wanting to settle their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked dependably with marginal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “glossy things disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will revolutionize your service … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction points that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a couple of even more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole tech infrastructure from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of lost productivity during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large error. The problems started piling up swiftly, until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Many Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 completely pointless e-mails had been sent out to individuals who need to NOT have gotten them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the issue lingered.
When I desperately connected to their support team, they slightly asserted “web server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, given that the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not help my service. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of general, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Namecheap
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the budget friendly price for accessibility to so many features. However I swiftly learned this low-cost base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core performance. Instantly my credit card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plummet practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending practices or attempted every fixing trick, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Namecheap.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only point I might believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial blunder. The cons drastically outweighed any advantages.
No software application is ideal, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial functions properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. However in knowledge, it showed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software application frequently obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your job life much easier, not extra difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Happy assistance evaluates mean much less if extreme problems suggest bad total use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary option can flawlessly meet every special business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more skeptical of “too great to be true” marketing claims and much less lured by the allure of glossy new objects. The devices you utilize daily should make count on through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.