As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Social Planner.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a desire happened theoretically. That would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, hopefully you can learn from my painful errors and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and clients receive the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing client connections via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially eye-catching for companies aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with minimal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “glossy object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will certainly reinvent your business … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a couple of more frustrations led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew changing systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire tech facilities from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of just some of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– and also managing shed efficiency during the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a huge error. The issues began piling up quickly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, managing membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to users who ought to NOT have gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the issue persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “web server problems” were to blame. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of sense, given that the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t help my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle general, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Social Planner
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget-friendly price for access to so many features. Yet I quickly discovered this affordable base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core performance. Instantly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open prices plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every fixing technique, I could hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Social Planner.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I might assume that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a massive blunder. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any benefits.
No software application is excellent, but the sheer volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical features properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing hype around new software typically obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life simpler, not more complex and untidy.
- Transparency builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages depend on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Satisfied assistance reviews mean less if too much issues imply inadequate overall usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can flawlessly meet every distinct business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental improvements normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Basically, I learned to be much more unconvinced of “too excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the appeal of glossy new items. The tools you make use of daily need to make count on via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.