As a company proprietor for over a years, I count on software program and automation to simplify operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel Trial Empire1.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a dream come true theoretically. That would not want a single option that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and failing) 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 company needs, with any luck you can gain from my painful mistakes and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small companies maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Use web site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and boost profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing consumer partnerships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for companies wanting to settle their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply worked accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a new device that will certainly change your company … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing points that I ‘d learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a few even more frustrations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology framework from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of just a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as taking care of lost productivity during the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large mistake. The concerns began accumulating swiftly, until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, handling membership expirations and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent out to users that should NOT have gotten them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the problem persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “web server concerns” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any type of sense, since the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally inappropriate and just really did not help my business. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of total, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Trial Empire1
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to so many features. But I swiftly learned this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core functionality. Instantly my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending methods or tried every repairing method, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Trial Empire1.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible engagement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed costs, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a substantial mistake. The cons significantly outweighed any type of advantages.
No software is ideal, but the sheer quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with critical functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. But in knowledge, it showed me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application often obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your job life easier, not more complex and messy.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust fund.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Happy assistance evaluates imply less if excessive problems indicate poor total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can flawlessly fulfill every distinct service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be extra doubtful of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The devices you use daily ought to make count on with openness and performance, not slick advertising.