As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my focus Is GoHighLevel a CRM.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, with any luck you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the ideal messages at the right time. Usage site and social media sites types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing client connections with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically attractive for services wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it just worked reliably with marginal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will reinvent your business … The yard usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few even more irritations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew changing systems was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a summary of simply several of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling shed productivity throughout the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big error. The problems began accumulating promptly, up until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed 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 email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, handling membership expiries and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be working penalty … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally unnecessary emails had actually been sent to customers who ought to NOT have actually received them. This happened 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the issue continued.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation didn’t make any feeling, because the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t benefit my service. I have thousands of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unreliable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Simple jobs like editing workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag came with expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing Is GoHighLevel a CRM
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the budget friendly rate for access to a lot of features. Yet I quickly discovered this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core capability. All of a sudden my bank card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices drop almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every fixing trick, I could barely push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards Is GoHighLevel a CRM.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had terrible interaction. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden charges, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant error. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any type of benefits.
No software application is perfect, yet the large quantity of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle vital functions properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. But in knowledge, it educated me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software frequently obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life less complicated, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues damages trust fund.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Delighted assistance examines imply less if extreme problems indicate inadequate general use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can completely fulfill every distinct service need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step renovations normally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I discovered to be extra doubtful of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily need to gain depend on through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.