As a company proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Search Atlas.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a desire come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, with any luck you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small businesses keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers receive the best messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting customer partnerships with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations aiming to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with minimal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will transform your business … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few even more disappointments led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech facilities from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an introduction of simply some of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– and also managing lost productivity during the button.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big error. The issues began accumulating swiftly, up until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
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 series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, handling membership expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be working penalty … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to customers who must NOT have received them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the issue persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any sense, since the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was totally undesirable and just really did not help my service. I have countless get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Search Atlas
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the inexpensive rate for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I rapidly learned this affordable base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic fees for core performance. Instantly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plummet nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every fixing method, I might barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Search Atlas.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only point I might think that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive mistake. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any benefits.
No software application is ideal, but the large volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle crucial features competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. But in hindsight, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically covers larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools must make your job life simpler, not extra complicated and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins trust.
- Seek objective evaluations. Pleased assistance evaluates indicate much less if too much issues imply inadequate overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary remedy can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements usually surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I found out to be extra doubtful of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you use daily ought to make depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.