As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software application and automation to enhance procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my attention Is GoHighLevel a CMS.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a dream become a reality on paper. Who would not want a single option that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating errors and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the right time. Use website and social media forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing customer connections via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically appealing for businesses wanting to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it just functioned accurately with very little difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly transform your service … The turf usually looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I ‘d learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire tech facilities from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a summary of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling lost efficiency throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a much better lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge mistake. The problems started accumulating rapidly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered 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 included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be working fine … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unimportant emails had been sent to individuals who ought to NOT have obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the issue persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, given that the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my service. I have thousands of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Simple tasks like editing workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Is GoHighLevel a CMS
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the inexpensive cost for access to numerous features. But I quickly discovered this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core functionality. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every single time you send an email with their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, but just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every repairing method, I can barely nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks Is GoHighLevel a CMS.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had awful engagement. The only point I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, broken features, and awful user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge error. The cons substantially outweighed any type of benefits.
No software is ideal, yet the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage vital features effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in hindsight, it showed me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around new software program often covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your job life easier, not more complicated and untidy.
- Openness builds count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys depend on.
- Seek honest testimonials. Happy assistance reviews imply much less if extreme concerns suggest inadequate overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can completely fulfill every one-of-a-kind service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step enhancements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be extra skeptical of “too great to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The devices you use daily should make trust fund via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.