As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to simplify operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Setup Services.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my company, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. Who wouldn’t want a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small businesses maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients get the best messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing client connections through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly attractive for organizations aiming to settle their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with marginal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny object disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your business … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction points that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a couple of more stress led me to assume perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I understood switching over systems was going to require migrating all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech framework from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of just some of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention dealing with shed productivity during the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel providing a better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a huge blunder. The concerns began piling up quickly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely unimportant emails had actually been sent out to customers who ought to NOT have received them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “server issues” were responsible. But this description didn’t make any kind of sense, because the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not work for my service. I have countless contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complex.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, individual, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag included costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Setup Services
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the affordable price for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I rapidly learned this economical base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core capability. Suddenly my credit card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates plummet virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or attempted every fixing technique, I can barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Setup Services.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I might believe that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop 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 kind of advantages.
No software program is perfect, but the large volume of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle vital functions properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software usually covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life easier, not extra challenging and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages trust.
- Look for honest evaluations. Happy assistance assesses suggest less if too much concerns imply bad general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can perfectly satisfy every unique organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental improvements commonly surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I learned to be much more hesitant of “too good to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily should gain trust fund with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.