As a company owner for over a years, I depend on software application and automation to improve operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my attention Who Needs GoHighLevel.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a desire happened theoretically. That would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, ideally you can pick up from my painful errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically eye-catching for businesses seeking to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with minimal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny item syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new device that will reinvent your business … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a few even more stress led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood changing platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire tech facilities from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling lost efficiency during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel providing a better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large mistake. The issues started piling up quickly, till it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event pointers, managing membership expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be functioning fine … till unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent to individuals who should NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were to blame. But this description really did not make any sense, considering that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was completely undesirable and simply really did not work for my company. I have countless contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the affordable price tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Who Needs GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the budget-friendly price for access to so many features. Yet I quickly discovered this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices drop virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks Who Needs GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had horrible involvement. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden fees, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big blunder. The cons significantly exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, but the sheer quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle important features capably or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software commonly covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life simpler, not extra challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins trust fund.
- Look for honest testimonials. Pleased assistance evaluates imply less if excessive issues imply bad total functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can flawlessly fulfill every distinct organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step enhancements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “also great to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily should earn trust fund with openness and performance, not slick advertising.