As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel Survey Builder.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a dream come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, hopefully you can pick up from my painful mistakes and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business keep their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing consumer relationships through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations aiming to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will certainly change your service … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a few more disappointments led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew changing systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire technology facilities from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a review of just several of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– as well as managing lost performance during the switch.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge error. The problems started piling up rapidly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, handling membership expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to users who need to NOT have obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the issue continued.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any feeling, given that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally undesirable and simply really did not help my company. I have countless get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows included digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage total, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the small cost tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Survey Builder
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the inexpensive rate for accessibility to so many features. However I rapidly discovered this inexpensive base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send an email via their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open rates plunge almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Survey Builder.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had terrible interaction. The only point I could think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden charges, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big blunder. The cons considerably outweighed any type of advantages.
No software is ideal, however the sheer volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle important functions capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around new software typically covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life easier, not much more complex and untidy.
- Openness develops count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages count on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Delighted support assesses indicate less if too much issues indicate inadequate general usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can completely meet every one-of-a-kind service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements commonly surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In other words, I learned to be a lot more skeptical of “too excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The tools you use daily ought to earn depend on through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.