As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to enhance procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel SaaS Snapshot.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always looking to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a desire happened on paper. That wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, ideally you can pick up from my painful mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small companies keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the best messages at the right time. Use site and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and supporting client relationships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for businesses wanting to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with very little fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will revolutionize your business … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may lower friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few even more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire technology framework from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– as well as handling lost performance during the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a large mistake. The issues started accumulating swiftly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, managing membership expirations and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals who ought to NOT have actually received them. This happened three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I desperately tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the issue persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server issues” were responsible. However this description really did not make any sense, considering that the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was totally undesirable and just didn’t benefit my business. I have countless calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel SaaS Snapshot
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the budget friendly price for access to many features. But I promptly learned this economical base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send an email through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plunge virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting method, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel SaaS Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had horrible engagement. The only point I could think that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, broken features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant blunder. The cons considerably exceeded any type of benefits.
No software is perfect, however the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to manage vital functions effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life simpler, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys trust.
- Look for honest evaluations. Pleased support evaluates indicate much less if extreme problems indicate bad general use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements usually exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I learned to be much more skeptical of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of glossy new items. The tools you utilize daily need to make trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.