As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software program and automation to enhance procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Privacy Policy.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to streamline and scale my service, it seemed like a dream come true on paper. Who wouldn’t want a solitary service that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, ideally you can pick up from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small companies maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media sites types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting customer partnerships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially attractive for companies looking to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it just functioned dependably with very little fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new device that will reinvent your company … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a couple of more stress led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I understood changing systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech facilities from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of just several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning everything over– as well as handling shed productivity throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big error. The issues started accumulating rapidly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, 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 clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, handling membership expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be working penalty … up until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unnecessary emails had actually been sent to individuals that need to NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, because the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my company. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Simple tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various sections. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage total, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag featured pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Privacy Policy
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the cost effective rate for access to a lot of features. But I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core capability. Instantly my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send an email with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to numerous dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open rates plunge virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out practices or tried every fixing trick, I could barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Privacy Policy.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only point I could assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a massive mistake. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any advantages.
No software program is ideal, but the sheer volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital functions competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in hindsight, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application usually obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life much easier, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Transparency builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins count on.
- Look for honest evaluations. Happy assistance assesses indicate less if excessive problems imply inadequate general use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can flawlessly meet every special organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental renovations commonly exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I learned to be more hesitant of “also great to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily need to make count on via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.