As a company owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to simplify operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Snapshot Templates.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a dream come true on paper. That wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business maintain their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client connections with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially eye-catching for businesses seeking to consolidate their tech pile.
For the most part, it just functioned dependably with very little hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will transform your company … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I would certainly found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few even more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching over systems was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole technology framework from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an overview of simply several of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– and also dealing with shed performance throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge blunder. The problems started piling up rapidly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion reminders, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely pointless emails had actually been sent out to customers that ought to NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the trouble persisted.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation didn’t make any sense, considering that the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various areas. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, 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 a person that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the small cost tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Snapshot Templates
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the economical rate for accessibility to so many features. But I rapidly learned this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core functionality. Instantly my bank card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged every single time you send an email through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plunge nearly over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting method, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Snapshot Templates.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only point I could assume that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed costs, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive blunder. The cons significantly exceeded any benefits.
No software application is ideal, yet the large volume of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to handle vital features competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore 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 accident. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program usually obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life easier, not more complex and untidy.
- Openness constructs count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles destroys count on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Pleased assistance assesses mean much less if extreme problems indicate bad total usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can completely fulfill every one-of-a-kind service requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements usually surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be more cynical of “too great to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the attraction of glossy new objects. The devices you make use of daily need to gain count on through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.