As a company proprietor for over a years, I depend on software application and automation to streamline operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel Premium Support.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream become a reality theoretically. That would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, ideally you can gain from my excruciating errors and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting customer partnerships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for companies aiming to combine their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with marginal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a new device that will change your business … The turf usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a few even more irritations led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole technology facilities from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– and also taking care of shed performance throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a big error. The issues began accumulating swiftly, till it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion reminders, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely irrelevant emails had been sent out to users that need to NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, since the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t work for my service. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, private, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Premium Support
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the affordable price for accessibility to many features. However I quickly discovered this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices plummet practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing method, I can barely push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Premium Support.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had awful involvement. The only thing I can think that would be causing 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 crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and awful interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big error. The disadvantages dramatically surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software application is ideal, however the sheer volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to deal with essential functions properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software often obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life simpler, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust fund.
- Look for objective reviews. Happy assistance examines suggest less if excessive concerns suggest poor total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can completely meet every one-of-a-kind company requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental improvements typically outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I found out to be extra unconvinced of “as well great to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the appeal of glossy new items. The tools you make use of daily must earn count on via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.