As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I count on software and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Pros and Cons.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to streamline and scale my organization, it looked like a desire come to life on paper. Who would not want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, with any luck you can learn from my excruciating blunders and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation requirements.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small companies maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the right messages at the correct time. Use site and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing client relationships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically attractive for businesses seeking to settle their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply worked reliably with minimal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will certainly change your company … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may lower friction factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a few even more disappointments led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology facilities from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of simply several of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of lost efficiency throughout the switch.
But inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-term service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large blunder. The problems began piling up swiftly, till it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate 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 registrations, sending out occasion suggestions, handling membership expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … till all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unimportant e-mails had been sent out to users who need to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “server problems” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, since the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t work for my service. I have thousands of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows included excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the small cost tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Pros and Cons
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the inexpensive cost for access to many features. But I promptly discovered this cheap base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed each time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open rates drop practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every repairing technique, I can barely nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Pros and Cons.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a substantial mistake. The cons substantially outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software program is ideal, yet the sheer volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle important features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in hindsight, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around new software program typically covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life much easier, not more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency builds depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages count on.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Pleased support assesses suggest much less if too much issues imply bad total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can perfectly meet every unique company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step improvements normally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be a lot more cynical of “too excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the attraction of shiny new objects. The tools you use daily need to make count on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.