As a company proprietor for over a years, I depend on software and automation to streamline procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Real Estate Agent Playbook.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire happened on paper. Who wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage website and social networks kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting consumer partnerships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly attractive for companies seeking to settle their tech stack.
Generally, it simply worked dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly transform your business … The yard typically looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few even more stress led me to think possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over systems was going to need migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole tech framework from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a review of just a few of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– not to mention taking care of lost efficiency throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big mistake. The problems began piling up quickly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event pointers, handling subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally pointless emails had been sent out to customers that ought to NOT have actually received them. This took place three days straight, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the issue persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were at fault. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was entirely undesirable and just really did not work for my service. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in totally various sections. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle general, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Real Estate Agent Playbook
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the affordable cost for access to numerous features. Yet I rapidly discovered this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every single time you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not sensible 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 prices plummet nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every fixing trick, I might barely push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Real Estate Agent Playbook.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had awful engagement. The only point I could believe that would be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed costs, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant error. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any type of benefits.
No software program is ideal, yet the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with vital features capably or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. But in knowledge, it showed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application frequently covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life simpler, not much more challenging and messy.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys trust fund.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Delighted assistance examines indicate less if extreme issues suggest bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can flawlessly satisfy every special business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements commonly surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I learned to be much more doubtful of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy new objects. The devices you use daily ought to make trust fund through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.