As an agency owner for over a decade, I count on software and automation to simplify operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Zoho.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single remedy that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this preferred new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, ideally you can gain from my agonizing mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching 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 actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help local business maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage site and social media forms to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and supporting customer relationships via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly appealing for organizations aiming to settle their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your company … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction factors that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, yet a few more frustrations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized switching over platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire tech infrastructure from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of just a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– and also handling lost productivity throughout the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a large mistake. The concerns started piling up promptly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every single 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 event suggestions, handling subscription expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … up until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had been sent out to users who need to NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were to blame. But this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, since the mistakes proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t benefit my service. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage total, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low price tag featured expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Zoho
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the economical rate for accessibility to many features. Yet I swiftly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed whenever you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates drop practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every repairing technique, I can barely push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Zoho.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only point I can think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, broken features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any benefits.
No software is excellent, however the large quantity of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to manage essential functions effectively or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. However in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically covers larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life simpler, not much more complicated and untidy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys count on.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Happy assistance assesses imply less if too much problems indicate inadequate general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly satisfy every distinct business demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental enhancements commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be extra unconvinced of “as well great to be true” marketing cases and much less lured by the attraction of glossy new objects. The devices you utilize daily ought to earn depend on through openness and performance, not slick advertising.