As an agency owner for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to improve procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Travel Agency Playbook.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management 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 become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, hopefully you can gain from my excruciating blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small companies maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers receive the right messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer relationships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially appealing for services looking to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with marginal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “glossy things disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly transform your service … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, yet a few even more irritations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire technology infrastructure from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as handling shed performance during the switch.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term option for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large error. The concerns began piling up swiftly, until it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unimportant emails had been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have received them. This took place three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I anxiously tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the problem lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they slightly declared “server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any sense, since the mistakes continued happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely inappropriate and just didn’t help my organization. I have countless get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different sections. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Travel Agency Playbook
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the economical cost for accessibility to so many features. However I swiftly discovered this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core functionality. Instantly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every single time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plummet practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending practices or attempted every fixing method, I could hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Travel Agency Playbook.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had awful interaction. The only thing I could think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and terrible interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a massive mistake. The cons considerably exceeded any type of benefits.
No software application is ideal, but the large volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of critical features capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software often covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your job life much easier, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Pleased support evaluates suggest much less if excessive problems imply bad total use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can perfectly fulfill every one-of-a-kind company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step renovations generally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be more cynical of “as well excellent to be true” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily need to earn trust fund via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.