As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to streamline procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel Newsletter.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to streamline and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire come true on paper. That wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist local business keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the best messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing client connections with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically attractive for businesses looking to consolidate their technology pile.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with marginal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things disorder”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will certainly change your company … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a couple of more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching over platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology framework from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of simply several of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing shed productivity during the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term service for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large blunder. The concerns began piling up rapidly, up until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, managing membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally pointless emails had actually been sent out to customers that need to NOT have obtained them. This took place three days straight, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I desperately attempted repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. But the issue persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally unacceptable and simply really did not work for my company. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different sections. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage total, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Newsletter
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the inexpensive cost for access to so many features. Yet I quickly discovered this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plummet practically over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every repairing technique, I could barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Newsletter.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden charges, broken features, and horrible interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive error. The cons dramatically exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software program is best, but the sheer quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital features properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. Yet in knowledge, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software program commonly obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your job life easier, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Openness builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys count on.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Happy support examines indicate less if excessive concerns suggest poor total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can completely fulfill every distinct organization demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I learned to be much more skeptical of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you use daily must earn trust with openness and performance, not slick advertising.