As a firm owner for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to improve procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Terms of Service.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a desire come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and stopping working) to change to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, with any luck you can gain from my painful blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to use and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers obtain the right messages at the correct time. Usage site and social networks kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically appealing for businesses aiming to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned reliably with very little difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a new tool that will certainly change your company … The yard often looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower friction points that I would certainly learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a couple of more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire technology framework from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of shed productivity during the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge mistake. The concerns started piling up rapidly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I ran into.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, managing membership expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely pointless e-mails had been sent to individuals who ought to NOT have received them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the issue continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “web server problems” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally unacceptable and just really did not help my business. I have hundreds of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of total, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag featured pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Terms of Service
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the economical cost for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I swiftly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core performance. Suddenly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every single time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting method, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Terms of Service.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had terrible involvement. The only point I might believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, broken features, and awful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge blunder. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software is ideal, yet the sheer volume of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle critical functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. But in knowledge, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software typically covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life easier, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness develops depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Satisfied assistance evaluates imply less if extreme problems imply bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can perfectly meet every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental enhancements usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be more doubtful of “as well great to be real” marketing claims and much less lured by the attraction of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you use daily must earn trust via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.