As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to streamline procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Regulatory Bundle.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a desire become a reality on paper. That would not want a single solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and stopping working) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, hopefully you can gain from my painful blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to utilize and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small businesses maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing consumer connections via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for services aiming to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will certainly change your service … The yard usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower friction points that I would certainly found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few even more stress led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of simply some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– not to mention handling shed performance during the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large mistake. The issues started piling up rapidly, until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I experienced.
Security Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, taking care of membership expirations and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally pointless emails had been sent to individuals who ought to NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server problems” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any type of sense, given that the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my service. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Regulatory Bundle
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the cost effective price for access to many features. However I promptly learned this affordable base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core functionality. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates plunge almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out practices or tried every fixing technique, I might hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Regulatory Bundle.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I can think that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a massive blunder. The disadvantages significantly exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software is best, however the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to manage important features competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software program frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life simpler, not a lot more complex and untidy.
- Openness constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Happy support reviews imply much less if excessive issues indicate bad general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can perfectly satisfy every distinct company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental renovations commonly surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I learned to be extra unconvinced of “also great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily ought to earn trust fund via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.