As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention Is GoHighLevel GDPR Compliant.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always wanting to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and failing) to change to this popular new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, hopefully you can gain from my excruciating mistakes and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it took care of everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help local business maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the right messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing consumer connections with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for services aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s discussing a new device that will certainly revolutionize your service … The grass frequently looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, but a couple of even more frustrations led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. 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 going to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole technology framework from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a review of just a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of lost productivity during the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better long-lasting service for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large blunder. The issues began accumulating promptly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I came across.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be working penalty … up until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent to customers who ought to NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the trouble continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server issues” were at fault. However this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, since the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely undesirable and simply really did not work for my service. I have hundreds of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely different sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage total, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing Is GoHighLevel GDPR Compliant
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the cost effective rate for accessibility to many features. Yet I quickly learned this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core capability. All of a sudden my bank card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open rates plunge nearly over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting method, I can hardly push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks Is GoHighLevel GDPR Compliant.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only point I might believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant blunder. The cons significantly surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage important features capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. However in knowledge, it instructed me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application commonly covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices must make your work life much easier, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins trust.
- Look for honest reviews. Satisfied assistance assesses mean much less if excessive concerns indicate poor total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can perfectly fulfill every unique service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements typically outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more skeptical of “too good to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The tools you utilize daily need to gain trust fund through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.