As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to streamline procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Supercharged SaaS Program.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a desire happened on paper. Who would not want a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, ideally you can pick up from my agonizing mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Use website and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive consumer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting client partnerships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly appealing for services wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just functioned dependably with very little fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will change your organization … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of more irritations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of just some of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– as well as dealing with lost productivity throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The problems began piling up swiftly, up until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, handling membership expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had been sent to individuals that need to NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the trouble continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were responsible. But this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, since the mistakes continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally undesirable and simply didn’t benefit my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Easy tasks like editing workflows entailed digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle general, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag came with costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Supercharged SaaS Program
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the cost effective rate for access to a lot of features. However I rapidly learned this inexpensive base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core capability. Instantly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plummet almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I could hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Supercharged SaaS Program.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had terrible involvement. The only point I might assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and awful interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial error. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any benefits.
No software program is perfect, however the sheer volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage vital functions competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it showed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software application usually covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your job life much easier, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins depend on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Pleased assistance evaluates mean much less if too much issues suggest poor total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single solution can completely fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements normally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I learned to be extra cynical of “as well excellent to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you utilize daily ought to gain count on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.