As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my focus Is GoHighLevel Free.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this preferred new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, with any luck you can gain from my painful errors and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Usage site and social networks kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and boost income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially attractive for businesses seeking to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly revolutionize your company … The grass usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a few more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– not to mention handling shed productivity throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a huge error. The problems started accumulating quickly, until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I came across.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, handling membership expiries and far more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had been sent to individuals who should NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the issue persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “server problems” were responsible. However this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, since the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally unacceptable and simply really did not work for my company. I have countless get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely different areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low cost tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing Is GoHighLevel Free
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the economical cost for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I rapidly discovered this low-cost base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core functionality. Instantly my bank card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every single time you send an email through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open prices plunge virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending methods or attempted every fixing technique, I can hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks Is GoHighLevel Free.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had awful involvement. The only thing I might assume that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed charges, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any benefits.
No software program is excellent, yet the large volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial features properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. But in knowledge, it taught me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software often covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life simpler, not more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins depend on.
- Look for objective evaluations. Pleased support examines mean less if too much concerns indicate bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can completely fulfill every distinct service need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be extra cynical of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The devices you utilize daily ought to gain count on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.