As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighlevel Review.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my company, it felt like a dream come true theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, hopefully you can learn from my excruciating errors and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I found Keap user-friendly to use and it managed whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the right messages at the correct time. Use site and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up 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 charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting client relationships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically attractive for services aiming to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren telephone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will certainly reinvent your company … The lawn commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an introduction of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– as well as taking care of lost performance throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big error. The issues started accumulating swiftly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I ran into.
Security Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, handling membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that must NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I frantically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the problem continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “web server issues” were responsible. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally unacceptable and just didn’t work for my company. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage total, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighlevel Review
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the economical cost for access to a lot of features. Yet I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates plunge practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every repairing trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighlevel Review.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible interaction. The only thing I could believe that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive mistake. The cons drastically surpassed any type of benefits.
No software is best, yet the sheer volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial features competently or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in knowledge, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program often obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life easier, not more challenging and untidy.
- Transparency develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys depend on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Delighted assistance examines mean less if too much problems indicate poor overall functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind business need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step improvements commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Basically, I learned to be extra unconvinced of “too great to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the allure of shiny new things. The tools you utilize daily should earn trust via openness and performance, not slick advertising.