As an agency owner for over a years, I rely on software and automation to improve operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my focus How Many Users Does GoHighLevel Have.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a dream happened theoretically. That would not desire a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable blunders and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: 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 looking for a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically appealing for organizations aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked accurately with marginal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The lawn frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction points that I would certainly discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, but a few more irritations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire technology framework from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of just some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling lost efficiency during the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel providing a better long-term option for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big blunder. The concerns started piling up promptly, until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … until instantly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to customers that must NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the issue persisted.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely asserted “server issues” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any feeling, because the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my organization. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing How Many Users Does GoHighLevel Have
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the cost effective price for access to many features. Yet I quickly discovered this cheap base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to numerous bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open prices plummet almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting method, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria How Many Users Does GoHighLevel Have.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only point I might think that would certainly be creating 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 concerns, concealed charges, busted features, and horrible interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge mistake. The cons considerably surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, but the sheer volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage important features competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. But in hindsight, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application usually obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life much easier, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Pleased assistance reviews imply much less if too much problems suggest poor general use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can completely meet every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental renovations normally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Basically, I learned to be much more unconvinced of “too good to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the attraction of shiny new items. The devices you use daily should earn trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.