As a company owner for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to streamline operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Pricing.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a desire happened on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, with any luck you can learn from my excruciating mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small businesses maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use site and social media kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and boost profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and supporting client connections through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for companies seeking to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with very little fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren telephone call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your business … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower friction factors that I would certainly discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, but a few more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech facilities from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of just some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– not to mention handling shed productivity during the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-term remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a big blunder. The issues started piling up quickly, until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, handling membership expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … till suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to find 171 completely pointless e-mails had actually been sent to individuals who should NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I anxiously tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the issue continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were at fault. Yet this description didn’t make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Pricing
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the budget-friendly cost for access to so many features. Yet I promptly discovered this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out practices or tried every troubleshooting technique, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Pricing.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only point I could think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, broken features, and awful interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive error. The cons significantly surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, but the large quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to manage essential functions effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. But in knowledge, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around new software application usually covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages trust.
- Seek honest testimonials. Satisfied assistance reviews suggest less if extreme concerns indicate bad total use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can completely fulfill every distinct business need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements generally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “also excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily must make count on with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.