As a firm owner for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Voicemail.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always aiming to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a dream happened theoretically. Who would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this popular brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small businesses keep their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly appealing for businesses looking to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it just functioned reliably with very little difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will change your company … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction points that I would certainly discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a few more disappointments led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching over systems was going to call for moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire technology framework from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– in addition to dealing with lost performance during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large blunder. The problems started accumulating rapidly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, handling membership expiries and far more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … till instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent out to customers that must NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the trouble persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they slightly declared “web server problems” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any sense, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my business. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Simple tasks like editing workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low cost tag included expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Voicemail
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the affordable cost for accessibility to numerous features. But I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core performance. All of a sudden my credit card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send out an email via their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates plunge almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every repairing method, I can barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Voicemail.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had terrible interaction. The only point I could believe that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden charges, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big blunder. The disadvantages significantly outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software application is perfect, yet the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial features effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program typically covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life easier, not extra complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems destroys trust fund.
- Look for objective evaluations. Satisfied assistance evaluates suggest much less if too much problems suggest poor overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can flawlessly fulfill every special company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements usually outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be extra cynical of “also great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the allure of shiny new things. The tools you utilize daily need to make count on through openness and performance, not slick advertising.