As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to improve procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel Partners.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my service, it appeared like a desire become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service demands, hopefully you can gain from my painful mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and clients receive the right messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing client relationships with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically attractive for services wanting to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned reliably with very little hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly change your service … The grass usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower friction points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire technology framework from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of just some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally international UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– not to mention dealing with shed performance during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term option for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a big blunder. The concerns started piling up swiftly, until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, managing subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to users who must NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I frantically attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, since the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my service. I have thousands of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Partners
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the budget friendly price for accessibility to many features. But I swiftly learned this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices plunge practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting method, I could barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Partners.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had dreadful engagement. The only point I can believe that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any benefits.
No software program is ideal, but the sheer quantity of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage vital functions properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. But in knowledge, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your job life less complicated, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Openness develops count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins trust fund.
- Seek objective evaluations. Happy support evaluates imply much less if excessive issues imply poor total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can perfectly fulfill every distinct service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step enhancements typically exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I found out to be much more hesitant of “too excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the appeal of shiny new things. The devices you make use of daily should gain depend on via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.