As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to improve procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel Template Library.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always wanting to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a desire come true on paper. That wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant blunders and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Usage website and social networks forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and rise revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client connections with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially attractive for businesses seeking to consolidate their technology stack.
Generally, it just worked dependably with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly change your organization … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction factors that I ‘d found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a few even more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole technology framework from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a summary of simply a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to taking care of shed efficiency throughout the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a big error. The issues began accumulating promptly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent out to individuals that must NOT have obtained them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the trouble continued.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely undesirable and simply really did not help my organization. I have hundreds of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage total, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low cost tag featured expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Template Library
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the affordable rate for access to a lot of features. However I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plummet practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting technique, I can barely push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Template Library.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had awful involvement. The only point I can think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed costs, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant blunder. The cons substantially surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software is perfect, however the sheer volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital functions properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software application typically obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life much easier, not more complicated and untidy.
- Openness builds count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues damages count on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Delighted support examines indicate much less if excessive problems suggest poor general usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can flawlessly fulfill every unique service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step improvements typically exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be more hesitant of “too great to be true” marketing claims and less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily ought to make depend on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.