As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to streamline operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel Unified Inbox.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a desire come to life on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, with any luck you can learn from my excruciating blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and boost profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer connections via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly eye-catching for businesses aiming to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with minimal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will revolutionize your company … The lawn frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a few more aggravations led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech infrastructure from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of just several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– not to mention handling lost productivity during the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better long-lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large blunder. The problems began piling up swiftly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, handling membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working fine … until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to users who should NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the issue persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any type of sense, considering that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely inappropriate and simply didn’t benefit my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Basic tasks like editing workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the small cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Unified Inbox
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the cost effective rate for accessibility to so many features. But I promptly discovered this low-cost base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I could barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Unified Inbox.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had dreadful engagement. The only point I could assume that would be triggering 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 problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge mistake. The cons substantially surpassed any benefits.
No software program is excellent, but the sheer volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage essential features competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around new software usually covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life much easier, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys trust fund.
- Seek honest reviews. Delighted assistance evaluates suggest less if too much concerns indicate poor overall functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary remedy can completely meet every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental renovations usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be a lot more cynical of “also excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the appeal of shiny new things. The devices you make use of daily must earn trust fund through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.