As a company owner for over a decade, I count on software program and automation to simplify operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my focus Shaun Clark GoHighLevel.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always looking to streamline and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire happened on paper. Who would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable errors and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small businesses maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing consumer connections through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially attractive for businesses aiming to combine their tech stack.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with minimal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new tool that will change your organization … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize rubbing points that I ‘d found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a few even more irritations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood changing systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech facilities from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of just some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing shed productivity throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The concerns began piling up rapidly, until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent to customers who must NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. But the trouble lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, since the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t benefit my business. I have countless get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle total, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, 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 clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low price tag featured expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Shaun Clark GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the inexpensive price for accessibility to numerous features. But I promptly learned this economical base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send an email through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I can hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks Shaun Clark GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had horrible involvement. The only point I could believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, broken features, and awful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant blunder. The cons substantially outweighed any type of advantages.
No software application is excellent, but the sheer volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of important functions effectively or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in knowledge, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software program typically obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools need to make your job life much easier, not much more challenging and messy.
- Openness builds count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles destroys trust.
- Seek honest reviews. Satisfied assistance reviews imply less if extreme concerns suggest inadequate total use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can flawlessly fulfill every special company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements normally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be extra unconvinced of “as well great to be real” marketing cases and less tempted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The devices you use daily must make trust through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.