As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to simplify procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel White Label Mobile App.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a desire come true on paper. Who wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, ideally you can pick up from my agonizing errors and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist local business keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the ideal messages at the right time. Use site and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and supporting customer connections via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially eye-catching for organizations seeking to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it just worked dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren telephone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly transform your organization … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole tech framework from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as dealing with lost productivity during the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a big error. The issues began accumulating rapidly, until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Protection Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned 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 included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent out to customers who must NOT have received them. This occurred three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the issue lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “server problems” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any kind of sense, since the mistakes continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally inappropriate and just didn’t work for my service. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complex.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag featured pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel White Label Mobile App
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the budget-friendly rate for accessibility to a lot of features. However I promptly discovered this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged each time you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plunge virtually over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every fixing trick, I can hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel White Label Mobile App.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had terrible engagement. The only point I might believe that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, but the sheer quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle crucial features competently or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. But in knowledge, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing hype around new software application frequently covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your job life much easier, not a lot more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Delighted support reviews imply less if too much concerns indicate inadequate overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can flawlessly satisfy every special business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental renovations commonly outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more cynical of “too excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn count on with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.