As a company owner for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to simplify procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest Who Uses GoHighLevel.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a dream come true on paper. That would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media types to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive consumer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and supporting consumer partnerships through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically attractive for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with marginal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will reinvent your business … The yard frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a few more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology facilities from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a review of just several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– and also taking care of lost performance during the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a big mistake. The concerns began piling up swiftly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be operating fine … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had been sent out to users who must NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the problem continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was completely inappropriate and simply really did not help my business. I have hundreds of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag featured pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Who Uses GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the economical rate for accessibility to many features. However I rapidly learned this economical base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed whenever you send an email via their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plummet virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every fixing trick, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Who Uses GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had dreadful engagement. The only point I could believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden fees, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a significant mistake. The cons dramatically surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software is perfect, but the large quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle essential features capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. However in hindsight, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around new software frequently covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your job life easier, not a lot more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Delighted assistance reviews indicate less if excessive issues imply bad general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can flawlessly meet every one-of-a-kind company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental enhancements generally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I learned to be extra cynical of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the allure of glossy new things. The devices you use daily need to gain trust with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.