As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to simplify operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel SaaSPRENEUR Mastermind.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a desire happened on paper. Who would not want a single service that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this preferred new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist local business maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media sites forms to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer relationships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically appealing for businesses aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it just worked accurately with marginal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will transform your service … The yard typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a few even more aggravations led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was going to require moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole technology facilities from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a review of just several of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– in addition to managing shed efficiency during the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-term option for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues started piling up swiftly, till it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single 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 occasion reminders, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning fine … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had been sent to individuals who should NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. But the issue continued.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they slightly declared “server problems” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, since the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, individual, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the affordable price tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel SaaSPRENEUR Mastermind
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the budget friendly rate for access to a lot of features. However I swiftly learned this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices plummet nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every repairing method, I can hardly push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel SaaSPRENEUR Mastermind.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible interaction. The only thing I could think that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and awful interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a huge blunder. The cons drastically surpassed any benefits.
No software program is perfect, but the large volume of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to manage essential features competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. However in hindsight, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application usually covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your work life easier, not extra challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust fund.
- Look for honest testimonials. Pleased assistance examines suggest less if too much issues imply bad total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single service can perfectly satisfy every unique organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements generally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I found out to be more doubtful of “as well great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the appeal of glossy new things. The tools you utilize daily must earn count on through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.