As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to simplify procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my focus How Many Customers Does GoHighLevel Have.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a desire come to life theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single option that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, ideally you can learn from my painful mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small businesses maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media kinds to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for organizations looking to combine their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with marginal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny things disorder”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your organization … The yard frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few even more aggravations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching over platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire technology framework from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an overview of simply some of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– not to mention handling shed performance throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large blunder. The concerns started piling up swiftly, up until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be functioning fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unimportant emails had been sent out to individuals that need to NOT have received them. This happened three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the issue continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was completely inappropriate and simply really did not work for my organization. I have countless get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle general, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing How Many Customers Does GoHighLevel Have
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the budget-friendly price for access to so many features. But I rapidly discovered this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core functionality. Suddenly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices plunge almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a useless 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing method, I could hardly push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks How Many Customers Does GoHighLevel Have.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had terrible involvement. The only point I can assume that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant blunder. The cons dramatically exceeded any type of benefits.
No software application is ideal, yet the sheer quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to manage critical functions properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it instructed me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application often obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life much easier, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Delighted assistance reviews indicate less if excessive problems suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can completely fulfill every distinct organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be more unconvinced of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you utilize daily need to gain trust via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.