As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to simplify procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Support.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a desire come to life theoretically. That would not desire a solitary option that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small businesses maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and clients receive the right messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically appealing for services wanting to combine their tech stack.
Generally, it simply functioned reliably with minimal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s discussing a brand-new device that will reinvent your organization … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing points that I ‘d learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a couple of more disappointments led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to require migrating 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 a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– and also managing lost efficiency throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a much better lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a large mistake. The concerns began piling up swiftly, till it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be working fine … up until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had been sent out to users who must NOT have received them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I desperately attempted repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they vaguely claimed “web server problems” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and challenging.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in totally various sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, specific, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Support
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the budget friendly rate for accessibility to numerous features. However I swiftly learned this economical base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core performance. Instantly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send an email through their web servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plummet almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every fixing method, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Support.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had dreadful engagement. The only point I can think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed charges, busted 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 company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big error. The cons considerably outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software is excellent, however the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to handle essential features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software often obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life much easier, not more challenging and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins trust.
- Seek unbiased reviews. Satisfied support reviews mean much less if extreme issues indicate bad general use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can completely satisfy every distinct business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step renovations commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I learned to be much more doubtful of “too excellent to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily need to gain count on through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.