As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Open Source.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to streamline and scale my service, it seemed like a desire happened on paper. Who would not want a solitary option that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this preferred new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing errors and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting customer connections with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly attractive for businesses seeking to consolidate their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new tool that will change your service … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a couple of more irritations led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– and also dealing with lost productivity throughout the switch.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The problems started piling up rapidly, till it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event pointers, managing membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … up until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 completely unimportant e-mails had been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have received them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically tried repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. But the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were to blame. But this description really did not make any kind of feeling, since the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely unacceptable and just really did not benefit my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of general, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Open Source
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the budget-friendly price for access to many features. Yet I rapidly discovered this cheap base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices plunge almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending techniques or tried every fixing technique, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Open Source.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had terrible engagement. The only point I might believe that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a big error. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any advantages.
No software is perfect, but the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle important functions capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application typically covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life much easier, not a lot more complex and messy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Delighted assistance assesses imply much less if extreme concerns imply poor total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary option can completely meet every special company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental improvements generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be extra unconvinced of “also good to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you use daily should earn depend on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.