As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to improve procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Vapi AI.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a dream come to life theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and falling short) to change to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, ideally you can gain from my agonizing blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled 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 created to help small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the right messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for businesses aiming to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with very little hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new tool that will transform your business … The grass often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a few more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew changing platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech infrastructure from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an overview of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as managing shed productivity during the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term service for my organization, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a huge error. The concerns started accumulating swiftly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, handling membership expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be operating fine … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent out to individuals that must NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the issue continued.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any type of sense, because the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was completely inappropriate and just really did not benefit my company. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, private, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the small cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vapi AI
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the budget friendly price for accessibility to many features. Yet I quickly discovered this inexpensive base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send an email with their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every fixing technique, I could hardly nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vapi AI.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only point I can believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden charges, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a huge blunder. The cons significantly outweighed any benefits.
No software application is perfect, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of vital features competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application typically obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life much easier, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Openness builds trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust.
- Seek honest reviews. Happy support reviews suggest much less if extreme concerns imply bad total usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly fulfill every unique company demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements normally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more skeptical of “too good to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the appeal of shiny new things. The devices you use daily need to earn count on via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.