As a firm owner for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Tools.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my service, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. That would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, ideally you can learn from my uncomfortable errors and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the right messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and increase revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting customer relationships with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for organizations seeking to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with minimal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your company … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a couple of even more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole tech framework from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an overview of simply some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– in addition to taking care of lost performance throughout the button.
However ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a large error. The problems started accumulating rapidly, up until it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, managing membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … till suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that need to NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the problem lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “server issues” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any feeling, since the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely unacceptable and just really did not benefit my organization. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low cost tag came with costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Tools
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the inexpensive price for access to numerous features. But I rapidly learned this inexpensive base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core capability. Instantly my credit card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send an email through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plummet practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting trick, I can hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Tools.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I could believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge mistake. The disadvantages dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, however the large volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage important functions competently or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing hype around new software application usually covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life less complicated, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues damages trust.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Happy support assesses suggest much less if extreme issues suggest bad general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental improvements commonly exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I found out to be much more unconvinced of “also excellent to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn count on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.