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As an agency owner for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to streamline operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my attention (actually just called “HighLevel” but found at “GoHighLevel.com”) .
The concept was appealing – an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and repair tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur at all times seeking to simplify and scale my business, it gave the look of a dream come true on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single solution that does all of it?
But on this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and failing) to change to this popular latest software. You’ll learn:
- The backstory of why I made a decision to migrate to GoHighLevel
- How much money and time I invested within the transition
- The myriad issues that emerged once I was fully onboarded
- How poor support left concerns unresolved
- Why I ultimately regretted drinking the GoHighLevel Kool-Aid
When you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is correct for your personal business needs, hopefully you possibly can learn from my painful mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. When you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs as a substitute. I exploit Keap.
- Watch out for Shiny Object Syndrome: Avoid the temptation to change to latest, unproven software platforms just because they appear more exciting. Persist with what’s working unless a latest solution offers clear, across-the-board improvements.
- Prioritize Simplicity: Select well-designed tools that simplify your work life fairly than complicate it. An intuitive and user-friendly interface is crucial for efficiency.
- Demand Transparency: Search for transparency in pricing and terms. Be cautious of hidden fees and unclear reseller models, as these can erode trust within the software provider.
- Seek Unbiased Reviews: Depend on unbiased, comprehensive reviews and testimonials when evaluating software. Concentrate to the general usability and functionality fairly than simply support reviews.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To grasp what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the primary place, you would like context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it handled the whole lot I needed – CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
For essentially the most part, it just worked reliably with minimal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% great). Automations ran easily with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren call of “shiny object syndrome”. You already know the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a latest tool that can revolutionize your corporation… The grass often looks greener on the opposite side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction points that I’d learned to tolerate over time with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a few more frustrations led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this yr (2023) I made a decision to make the leap. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $300/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took flippantly. I knew switching platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech infrastructure from scratch.
Here’s an summary of just among the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Organising landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all yet again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning the whole lot over – not to say coping with lost productivity through the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a higher long-term solution for my business, Dripify. Oh how mistaken I was…
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big mistake. The problems began piling up quickly, until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Security Issues & A number of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate each workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding latest email subscribers, onboarding latest clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event reminders, managing membership expirations, and rather more.
The whole lot appeared to be functioning tremendous…until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to search out 171 completely irrelevant emails had been sent to users who should NOT have received them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 171 people every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. But the issue persevered.
After I desperately reached out to their support team, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were accountable. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, for the reason that errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was completely unacceptable and just didn’t work for my business. I even have 1000’s of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running easily.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these issues…
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where the whole lot was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and sophisticated.
Easy tasks like editing workflows involved digging through menu systems that were far and wide. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll let you know what I mean by talking about their funnel builder for example. There have been 3 separate settings panels to administer overall, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of those core settings were unfolded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress fairly than a polished product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low price tag got here with costly compromises…
Misleading Pricing
One in every of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the reasonably priced price for access to so many features. But I quickly learned this low-cost base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
Because it turned out, you get charged each time you send an email through their servers. So for prime volume users, this added as much as a whole lot of dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “reasonably priced” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The ultimate dealbreaker was seeing my fastidiously nurtured email open rates plummet almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting trick, I could barely nudge open rates back into the kids – still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks.
Let me repeat: my EXACT SAME AUDIENCE AND EMAILS suddenly had awful engagement. The one thing I could think that will be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, broken features, and horrible interface, I had finally reached my limit…
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 45 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge mistake. The cons dramatically outweighed any advantages.
No software is ideal, however the sheer volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the top of the day, software comes right down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle critical functions competently or consider a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away – even after investing significant time, money, and energy migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel will be summed up as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it taught me a few key lessons:
1. Stick with what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively higher across the board. Change brings risk.
2. Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around latest software often obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is important.
3. Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life easier, no more complicated and messy.
4. Transparency builds trust. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems destroys trust.
5. Seek unbiased reviews. Pleased support reviews mean less if excessive issues imply poor overall usability.
6. Perfection is unimaginable. No single solution can perfectly meet every unique business need. Find the least-bad fit.
7. Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements typically outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works tremendous.
Briefly, I learned to be more skeptical of “too good to be true” marketing claims and fewer tempted by the allure of shiny latest objects. The tools you utilize day by day should earn trust through transparency and performance, not slick promoting.
Lesson learned.
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