As a company owner for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to improve operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my focus Is There a Free Version of GoHighLevel.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a dream become a reality on paper. That would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this preferred new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, ideally you can learn from my agonizing errors and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing client connections with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically appealing for organizations aiming to combine their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with minimal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your service … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a couple of more frustrations led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I understood switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of simply some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– as well as handling shed productivity throughout the button.
However eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a big mistake. The problems began piling up swiftly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, handling membership expirations and much more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … until unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that must NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I anxiously tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely unacceptable and just didn’t help my business. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the small cost tag included costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing Is There a Free Version of GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the affordable rate for access to many features. However I quickly discovered this cheap base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core capability. Suddenly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending practices or attempted every fixing method, I could barely push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks Is There a Free Version of GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible engagement. The only thing I might think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden charges, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a massive error. The cons drastically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software program is ideal, yet the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of important features competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around new software usually obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life easier, not extra complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs count on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys trust.
- Look for honest reviews. Happy support assesses imply much less if too much issues suggest bad total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can completely fulfill every distinct service need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step enhancements usually outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “as well excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The tools you use daily must gain depend on with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.