As a company owner for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to improve operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Special Offer.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always looking to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a desire happened on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, hopefully you can pick up from my painful blunders and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small companies maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting consumer partnerships through effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially attractive for companies seeking to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply worked dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s discussing a new device that will revolutionize your business … The yard frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a couple of even more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood changing platforms was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech infrastructure from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of just several of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to managing shed performance during the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge mistake. The concerns started accumulating quickly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to customers who must NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the trouble persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any type of sense, considering that the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my business. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in totally various sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage total, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Special Offer
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the cost effective rate for access to so many features. However I quickly learned this inexpensive base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core functionality. Suddenly my charge card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending out methods or tried every fixing trick, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Special Offer.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had horrible interaction. The only thing I might think that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a massive blunder. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is perfect, but the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to handle important features properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software program usually obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your job life less complicated, not extra challenging and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages trust.
- Look for honest testimonials. Satisfied support assesses imply less if extreme issues indicate inadequate total usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly satisfy every unique business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step renovations generally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra cynical of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily ought to gain trust fund via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.