As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to improve operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my focus Is GoHighLevel Worth The Investment.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a desire come true theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, with any luck you can learn from my painful errors and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media types to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and boost earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly appealing for services seeking to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly change your business … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a couple of more frustrations led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire technology framework from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– and also managing shed efficiency throughout the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The problems began accumulating rapidly, until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion suggestions, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I desperately tried repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “server problems” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, since the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally unacceptable and simply really did not benefit my organization. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Simple tasks like editing workflows included digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the small cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing Is GoHighLevel Worth The Investment
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to a lot of features. However I quickly discovered this inexpensive base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core performance. All of a sudden my credit card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices plummet practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting technique, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards Is GoHighLevel Worth The Investment.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible involvement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, broken features, and awful interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial error. The disadvantages significantly exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, but the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage important features effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software program usually covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life easier, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages depend on.
- Seek objective reviews. Happy assistance reviews suggest much less if too much issues indicate bad general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step renovations normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be a lot more hesitant of “too good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new items. The tools you utilize daily should earn depend on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.