As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software program and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Revenue.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a desire come to life theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this preferred new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, with any luck you can gain from my unpleasant mistakes and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid local business keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client connections through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially attractive for services seeking to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply worked accurately with marginal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s discussing a new tool that will reinvent your organization … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a few even more frustrations led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology facilities from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply several of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– in addition to taking care of lost productivity during the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a big error. The concerns started piling up quickly, up until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned 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 brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating fine … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to customers who need to NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the issue lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, because the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t work for my service. I have countless contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of general, private, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low price tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Revenue
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the budget-friendly price for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I promptly discovered this economical base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send an email through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices drop virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting method, I might hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Revenue.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant blunder. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software is best, yet the large volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with vital features properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. But in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software application usually covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life less complicated, not much more challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles destroys trust.
- Look for honest evaluations. Happy assistance evaluates indicate less if too much concerns suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can flawlessly meet every distinct organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements normally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be a lot more unconvinced of “too good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily should make count on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.