As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Starter Vs Unlimited.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner always looking to streamline and scale my organization, it looked like a dream come to life on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my unpleasant mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and customers obtain the best messages at the right time. Usage site and social media sites forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially attractive for services looking to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with very little fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new tool that will revolutionize your company … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a couple of more disappointments led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of simply some of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing shed productivity throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big error. The problems started accumulating quickly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing membership expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … till suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to users who need to NOT have received them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were at fault. However this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, since the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely unacceptable and simply really did not help my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely different sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Starter Vs Unlimited
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget friendly price for access to so many features. However I quickly learned this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core functionality. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open rates plummet practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every repairing trick, I might barely push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Starter Vs Unlimited.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had horrible engagement. The only thing I can believe that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden fees, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial error. The disadvantages significantly exceeded any type of advantages.
No software is ideal, but the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of essential features properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software commonly covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek objective reviews. Pleased support reviews mean less if extreme issues suggest poor general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind business requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more skeptical of “too great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the appeal of shiny new things. The tools you make use of daily should make trust via openness and performance, not slick advertising.