As a company owner for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to enhance operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel Square POS.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a dream come to life theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, hopefully you can learn from my excruciating errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it managed everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing client connections with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically attractive for services seeking to combine their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with marginal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s talking about a new device that will change your organization … The lawn typically looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction points that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, yet a few even more irritations led me to assume perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole technology framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– not to mention taking care of lost productivity during the button.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large blunder. The concerns started accumulating promptly, up until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be operating fine … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to customers that should NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the problem lingered.
When I desperately connected to their support team, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any sense, since the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely undesirable and simply really did not benefit my organization. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and difficult.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, private, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Square POS
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the affordable price for access to a lot of features. However I swiftly learned this cheap base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every single time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates drop practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending methods or tried every fixing technique, I might hardly nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Square POS.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had awful involvement. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big blunder. The cons dramatically outweighed any benefits.
No software is excellent, however the sheer volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle important functions properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in knowledge, it educated me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program often covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life simpler, not a lot more complex and untidy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Delighted support examines mean much less if excessive problems suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary solution can perfectly meet every special service requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step enhancements usually outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “as well excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy new items. The tools you utilize daily need to gain depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.