As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to improve procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my focus Launch HighLevel Together.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my service, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, ideally you can learn from my agonizing errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients receive the best messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and boost income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing client connections through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations aiming to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with marginal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly change your service … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a couple of even more irritations led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew changing platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire technology framework from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a summary of simply a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– in addition to taking care of lost efficiency during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large error. The concerns began accumulating rapidly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, handling membership expirations and far more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … until instantly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent out to individuals that should NOT have actually obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the trouble continued.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t help my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and challenging.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Launch HighLevel Together
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for access to numerous features. Yet I rapidly discovered this cheap base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core functionality. Suddenly my credit card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices plummet nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every fixing method, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria Launch HighLevel Together.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had horrible involvement. The only thing I might believe that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed costs, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial error. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any advantages.
No software is excellent, but the sheer volume of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle critical features effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software program typically covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools need to make your job life less complicated, not much more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages count on.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Happy support evaluates mean much less if extreme problems suggest poor overall usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly meet every unique business requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step renovations generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be extra cynical of “also excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily need to earn count on with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.