As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to simplify procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighLevel Nameservers.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a dream happened on paper. Who would not desire a single option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service demands, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant errors and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the best messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting consumer connections with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically appealing for services aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply worked reliably with marginal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new device that will revolutionize your company … The turf frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing points that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a few even more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood switching systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole tech facilities from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a summary of simply several of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to taking care of lost productivity throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a huge error. The issues began piling up swiftly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent to individuals who ought to NOT have gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the issue lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “server problems” were to blame. However this description really did not make any type of feeling, because the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, private, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the small cost tag featured costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Nameservers
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget friendly price for access to so many features. Yet I swiftly discovered this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send an email through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open rates drop practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every troubleshooting technique, I could barely push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Nameservers.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible involvement. The only thing I might believe that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, broken features, and awful interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial error. The cons drastically exceeded any type of advantages.
No software program is ideal, yet the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of critical features capably or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. But in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application frequently covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life easier, not much more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins trust.
- Look for honest evaluations. Satisfied support evaluates mean less if extreme concerns indicate poor overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can completely meet every unique organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step renovations commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I found out to be extra doubtful of “too good to be true” marketing cases and less lured by the allure of shiny new objects. The tools you use daily must make count on with openness and performance, not slick advertising.