As an agency owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to improve operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel ZappyChat.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a dream become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, ideally you can pick up from my painful mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small businesses maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use website and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer relationships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially eye-catching for services aiming to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with minimal hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The turf typically looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction points that I would certainly found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a couple of even more frustrations led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood changing systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an overview of simply several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– and also managing lost efficiency throughout the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-term solution for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge mistake. The problems started accumulating rapidly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, handling membership expirations and much more.
Everything appeared to be functioning fine … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent to customers who ought to NOT have received them. This happened three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I desperately attempted fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. However the issue continued.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my organization. I have hundreds of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complex.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag featured costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel ZappyChat
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the budget friendly price for accessibility to numerous features. However I quickly discovered this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core capability. Suddenly my bank card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plunge nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending techniques or attempted every repairing method, I might hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel ZappyChat.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful engagement. The only point I could think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant mistake. The cons significantly exceeded any type of benefits.
No software application is perfect, however the sheer volume of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage critical functions properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application commonly covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life simpler, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins count on.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Pleased assistance examines indicate less if extreme concerns imply poor total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can completely satisfy every distinct company demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental improvements typically outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I learned to be a lot more doubtful of “too great to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of glossy new items. The tools you utilize daily ought to gain count on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.