As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to improve procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Sign Up.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my service, it seemed like a desire happened on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this preferred new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, with any luck you can gain from my agonizing blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small companies maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the best messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically attractive for services looking to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply worked dependably with marginal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren call of “shiny object disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The lawn frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction points that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few more frustrations led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire technology facilities from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to handling shed productivity throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel offering a better long-term remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a big error. The issues started accumulating quickly, up until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I came across.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … till instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had been sent out to users that ought to NOT have obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the trouble continued.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were responsible. But this description really did not make any type of sense, since the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my business. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complex.
Basic jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the small cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Sign Up
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the cost effective price for accessibility to so many features. However I swiftly discovered this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send out an email through their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates plunge almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out practices or tried every fixing technique, I could hardly push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Sign Up.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had terrible interaction. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden fees, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant mistake. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any advantages.
No software program is best, yet the large quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle important features capably or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. However in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program commonly obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life less complicated, not a lot more difficult and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins trust fund.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Pleased support reviews indicate much less if extreme issues imply bad overall use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can completely fulfill every special company need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental improvements typically exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more hesitant of “also excellent to be real” marketing claims and less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you use daily should make trust via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.