As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Opportunities.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As a business owner always wanting to streamline and scale my organization, it looked like a desire come true theoretically. Who would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, ideally you can gain from my painful blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers obtain the right messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting consumer partnerships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations looking to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it just worked dependably with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will certainly transform your service … The turf typically looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a few more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech framework from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of just some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling lost performance during the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues began accumulating quickly, till it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion suggestions, handling subscription expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the problem lingered.
When I desperately connected to their support team, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. Yet this explanation really did not make any sense, because the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was entirely inappropriate and just really did not help my organization. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage general, individual, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low price tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Opportunities
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the budget friendly price for accessibility to numerous features. But I promptly learned this cheap base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core capability. Suddenly my bank card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send an email with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plunge nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting trick, I can hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Opportunities.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible engagement. The only point I might believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant mistake. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software is excellent, yet the sheer quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage crucial features properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software program typically covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life less complicated, not a lot more complicated and untidy.
- Transparency builds count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys depend on.
- Seek unbiased reviews. Pleased assistance examines mean less if extreme problems imply inadequate total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single solution can completely meet every unique business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step improvements normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I learned to be much more unconvinced of “also great to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the attraction of glossy new things. The devices you use daily need to gain depend on with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.