As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel SaaSPRENEUR Program.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my organization, it looked like a desire happened on paper. That would not want a solitary service that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, with any luck you can learn from my painful mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over 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 gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it handled everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer connections via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly appealing for businesses seeking to settle their technology pile.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with very little fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will transform your business … The lawn often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a couple of more stress led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology infrastructure from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of simply a few of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– and also handling lost productivity during the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term option for my organization, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a large error. The issues started piling up rapidly, until it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion reminders, managing subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent to customers that ought to NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the issue continued.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely declared “server issues” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was completely undesirable and just didn’t help my organization. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel SaaSPRENEUR Program
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget-friendly price for access to many features. Yet I swiftly learned this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send an email through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices plummet practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every fixing trick, I could hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel SaaSPRENEUR Program.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had horrible involvement. The only point I could think that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a big blunder. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any type of advantages.
No software is best, but the sheer volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to take care of critical features properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application usually covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life easier, not extra difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins depend on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Delighted assistance assesses indicate much less if too much problems imply poor general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single remedy can perfectly fulfill every distinct organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental enhancements usually outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be much more doubtful of “too great to be real” marketing claims and less attracted by the appeal of glossy new items. The devices you utilize daily must make depend on via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.