As a firm owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to streamline procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my attention Is GoHighLevel Only For Agencies.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a desire come to life theoretically. Who would not want a solitary option that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business needs, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly attractive for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with minimal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly revolutionize your company … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was going to need moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire tech framework from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of just a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing shed performance throughout the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The issues began accumulating quickly, until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, managing membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … till suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had been sent to individuals that must NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the issue persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle overall, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Is GoHighLevel Only For Agencies
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the budget friendly price for accessibility to many features. But I swiftly learned this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plunge virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every repairing trick, I can barely nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Is GoHighLevel Only For Agencies.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had awful engagement. The only thing I can think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed fees, busted features, and awful user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge error. The cons significantly surpassed any benefits.
No software application is excellent, but the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to manage important features competently or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. But in hindsight, it taught me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software application usually covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life less complicated, not extra difficult and untidy.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys count on.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Delighted support reviews mean less if excessive issues suggest bad total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly fulfill every one-of-a-kind business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental enhancements normally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be a lot more unconvinced of “also great to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less tempted by the appeal of glossy new objects. The devices you utilize daily should make depend on with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.