As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to streamline operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my attention Is GoHighLevel Open Source.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a desire come to life theoretically. That would not desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and failing) to switch over to this prominent new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, with any luck you can learn from my agonizing blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and boost revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing consumer connections with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for companies seeking to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with very little hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren call of “glossy things syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new tool that will certainly transform your business … The turf typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an overview of just several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– in addition to dealing with lost efficiency throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The issues began accumulating swiftly, till it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, managing membership expiries and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unimportant emails had been sent to users who need to NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I anxiously tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were responsible. However this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, because the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t benefit my company. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low price tag featured expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing Is GoHighLevel Open Source
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the affordable rate for access to numerous features. But I swiftly discovered this affordable base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send out an email through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates plummet nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every repairing trick, I might hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria Is GoHighLevel Open Source.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had awful engagement. The only thing I might think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a massive error. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any advantages.
No software is best, but the large quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage essential features capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. But in knowledge, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around new software often covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life simpler, not extra complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins count on.
- Seek impartial reviews. Delighted support examines mean much less if extreme concerns indicate inadequate total functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can completely satisfy every distinct business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental enhancements typically surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I discovered to be a lot more cynical of “also good to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The tools you utilize daily must earn trust through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.