As a firm proprietor for over a years, I count on software application and automation to streamline procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Plugins.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my service, it appeared like a desire come true on paper. That wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant errors and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage site and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations looking to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply worked reliably with minimal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will revolutionize your organization … The grass typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a couple of even more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology framework from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of just several of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– and also handling lost performance throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large error. The problems began piling up rapidly, till it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion reminders, taking care of membership expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely pointless e-mails had been sent out to customers that ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the trouble lingered.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly declared “server issues” were at fault. However this description really did not make any sense, since the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely inappropriate and just really did not help my company. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage general, private, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Plugins
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the cost effective price for accessibility to a lot of features. However I quickly learned this inexpensive base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core performance. Instantly my charge card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every repairing method, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Plugins.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had awful engagement. The only point I could think that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, broken features, and terrible interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a big mistake. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any advantages.
No software application is excellent, yet 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 manage essential features competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. However in knowledge, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life much easier, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages count on.
- Look for objective evaluations. Happy support evaluates mean less if too much issues indicate poor overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can perfectly meet every distinct company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements typically surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be much more skeptical of “too good to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The tools you use daily need to earn trust fund via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.