There's no shortage of tools available for digital marketing agency owners. Frankly, it can get overwhelming trying to figure out your ideal tech stack. You want tools that move the business forward, but you don't want to overcomplicate things or waste money on expensive software that never delivers on its promise.
HighLevel (often called GoHighLevel) has become the default platform for a huge share of the agencies we coach at Seven Figure Agency. It is the platform we run inside Plumbing & HVAC SEO, the agency that has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies multiple years running, and hundreds of the agencies in our program use it to land more clients, deliver better results, and retain the clients they already have.
This guide answers the question “what is HighLevel,” shows exactly where it fits inside a digital marketing agency, walks through the client-facing plays that produce the fastest ROI, and gives you an honest look at whether it belongs in your stack.
Watch: Why HighLevel Is My Go-To Platform
Want to test it yourself? We have a relationship with HighLevel that gets agencies an extended free trial. Start your extended HighLevel free trial here.
What Is HighLevel?
HighLevel is an all-in-one sales and marketing platform built specifically for agencies. It combines CRM, pipeline management, funnels and websites, email marketing, two-way SMS, appointment booking, forms and surveys, workflow automation, call tracking, reputation management, course delivery, and reporting inside a single login.
Two things make it different from the marketing automation platforms that came before it:
- It is consolidated. Instead of licensing eight tools and wiring them together with Zapier, you get one platform where the funnel, the follow-up, the calendar, and the pipeline all live on the same contact record.
- It is built for agencies, and it is white label. You get sub-accounts for each client, you can brand the platform as your own, and you keep the profit on what you resell. That is a business model, not just a piece of software.
That second point is why HighLevel spread through the agency world the way it did. It is not only a cost saver. It is a new service line and a new recurring revenue stream you can sell to the clients you already have.
Why HighLevel Is the Go-To Marketing System for Agencies
Running a digital agency is complicated. There are a lot of moving parts and they all need to talk to each other. You might have a great email platform, but you also need landing pages, appointment booking, surveys, SMS, call tracking, and course hosting to move a prospect from click to signed agreement.
If you have tried to assemble that yourself, you have hit the same two walls we did:
- Cost. Licenses for premium features across six or eight tools add up fast.
- Integration pain. Getting the tools to talk to each other is a nightmare. Things break silently, and you end up paying automation consultants and Zapier experts to hold it together.
Here is what our own stack looked like before we moved, and what HighLevel replaced:
| What we used to pay for | What it did | Inside HighLevel |
|---|---|---|
| Infusionsoft / Keap | Email, campaigns, billing | CRM, email, workflows |
| ClickFunnels / Leadpages | Landing pages and funnels | Funnel and website builder |
| Fix Your Funnel | Two-way text messaging | Native two-way SMS and unified inbox |
| PlusThis | Pipeline visibility add-ons | Opportunities and pipelines |
| Calendly / ScheduleOnce | Appointment booking | Calendars with automated reminders |
| SurveyMonkey / EmailMeForm | Pre-appointment questionnaires | Forms and surveys |
| CallRail / RingCentral | Call tracking and routing | Call tracking, recording, and IVR |
Hopping between Infusionsoft, Calendly, Fix Your Funnel, and ClickFunnels just to see what was happening in our own marketing was costing real money and real hours. Consolidating it saved us thousands of dollars a month and, more importantly, made the marketing itself better because nothing fell between the tools.
The Two Questions Every Agency Owner Should Ask About Software
When I evaluate any tool for the agency, I only care about two questions:
- Will this help me deliver world-class marketing that gets in front of my ideal prospects, impresses them, and gets them onto my calendar pre-positioned to buy?
- Will this help me generate better results for the clients I already have, so they get more return on investment, stay longer, and refer us to others?
HighLevel is the rare tool that answers yes to both. Let's take them one at a time.
1. Better marketing for your own agency
Even if you never resold a single sub-account, HighLevel would pay for itself on two features alone:
- Two-way text messaging. Email is still a great mechanism and you absolutely want a list. But your best prospects live on their cell phone. If you can text them and they can text you back, you are in a real conversation. Most of the legacy marketing automation platforms simply cannot do that.
- Pipeline automation. Being able to see what is actually in play, who opted in, who is scheduled, and who is in hot lead follow-up changed how we manage deal flow. That visibility is a big part of what accelerated our agency past multiple seven figures.
Add the funnel, the calendar, the pre-appointment survey, the ringless voicemail, and the call tracking, and your entire client acquisition system lives in one place at a lower cost than the pile of tools it replaced.
2. Better results for the clients you serve
As a digital marketing agency, your job is to get clients ranked, drive traffic, and generate leads. But here is the pattern we kept running into: we were generating the calls, the form fills, and the inquiries, and clients were not converting them. The leads were there. The sales were not.
Marketing automation fixes that, and before HighLevel it was effectively impossible to deploy for a small local business. Signing a plumbing company up for its own Infusionsoft account with setup fees and monthly licenses was cost prohibitive, and there was no meat on the bone for the agency.
HighLevel changed the math. You can set up marketing automation for your clients at the same level you run it for yourself, at no meaningful incremental cost, white labeled so it looks completely proprietary to you. Ours is branded Conversion Amp at Plumbing & HVAC SEO. It generates better results, more stickiness, a differentiated offer in the market, and a profit stream that is yours to keep.
Five HighLevel Plays That Produce Client ROI Fast
Speed to lead
Every lead a client gets, whether an inbound call or a web form, should be followed up within five minutes via email, SMS, and phone. We deploy what we call smart forms: the lead gets an instant text and an instant call, and the office gets a call that says “press 1 to connect with the customer.” It eliminates the lack of follow-through that quietly kills campaigns. Speed to lead alone more than pays for our entire HighLevel investment many times over, because clients convert more of the leads we already generate.
Live chat and AI chat
Customers want to communicate by chat, and most local businesses have no mechanism for it. Put the chat widget on the client's website, their Google Business Profile, and Facebook Messenger, layer AI chat on top to answer questions and extract the lead details, and you convert people in the channel they prefer.
Database reactivation
This is my favorite play, and we learned the concept from Rob Bailey. Your clients are sitting on past customers and dead leads and doing nothing with them. Load that database into your white label HighLevel account and make an offer: “We will be in your area later this week, we'd like to offer you a $59 in-home inspection, interested?” Done correctly, it produces responses, appointments, and revenue without another dollar of ad spend. It is the fastest way to deliver a measurable win in a new client's first week while the SEO and paid search build up.
Pipeline management and ROI reporting
Clients leave when they feel like they are spending money and cannot see the return. Drop every lead you generate onto a pipeline for them and you can say: “You spent $3,500 a month with us plus $5,000 in paid search. That produced 270 inbound leads, 72 of them booked, and here is the revenue.” That single report is one of the strongest retention tools you have.
Snapshots and niche templates
HighLevel works on a snapshot basis. Build the best-in-class campaign for your niche one time, then clone it from client to client in minutes. That is how a small team can deliver an enterprise-grade automation build to fifty local businesses. Our Conversion Amp snapshot covers the intake form and chat, the immediate text and call, the drip sequence, the post-purchase thank you and review request, the referral ask, and the long-term nurture that turns a one-time customer into a repeat buyer.
Why HighLevel for Digital Marketing Agencies (Video)
Start your extended HighLevel free trial here
How HighLevel Makes Your Agency More Profitable
- Reduce costs. One platform instead of six or eight licenses, with no automation consultant on retainer to keep the connections alive.
- Improve efficiency. No re-keying data between systems, and no Zap that breaks at 2 a.m. and takes a week to notice.
- Maximize conversions. Generating leads is one thing. Converting them is another. Speed to lead, chat, and nurture close the leaks in the funnel, for you and for your clients.
- Add a white label revenue stream. You can charge for the automation build and the monthly management, and the margin is yours. In the old model you were asking the client to pay a third party $300 a month and you made nothing.
- Increase retention. Clients who can see their pipeline, their booked jobs, and their ROI do not churn the same way. Automation is one of the stickiest services you can attach.
Is HighLevel Right for Every Agency?
Being honest about this matters more than the affiliate commission. HighLevel is a strong fit if you serve a defined niche, you have or want recurring retainer clients, and you are willing to invest the time to build your snapshot properly. The platform rewards standardization.
It is a weaker fit if you take on wildly different one-off projects with no repeatable follow-up model, or if nobody on the team will own the build. The platform is deep, which means an unowned account turns into another half-configured tool. Give it a real owner, build one niche snapshot, and deploy it everywhere.
HighLevel FAQ
What is HighLevel used for?
Agencies use HighLevel to run their own client acquisition (funnels, calendars, CRM, pipelines, email and SMS follow-up) and to deliver marketing automation, chat, database reactivation, and ROI reporting to their clients under their own brand.
Is HighLevel the same as GoHighLevel?
Yes. The company's domain is gohighlevel.com, and the product is commonly called both HighLevel and GoHighLevel.
Can I white label HighLevel?
Yes. On the agency plans you can brand the platform as your own, place it on your own domain, and resell sub-accounts to clients at the price you choose.
What does HighLevel replace?
For us it replaced Infusionsoft/Keap, ClickFunnels, Fix Your Funnel, PlusThis, Calendly, EmailMeForm, and a chunk of our call tracking spend.
Is there a HighLevel free trial?
Yes, and through our relationship with HighLevel agencies get an extended trial rather than the standard one. Start the extended free trial here. Check gohighlevel.com for current plan pricing, since tiers and features change.
Do I need to be technical to use it?
No, but somebody needs to own it. If you can build a landing page and map out a follow-up sequence on paper, you can build it in HighLevel. Starting from a proven snapshot shortens the curve dramatically.
Get Your Extended HighLevel Free Trial
The best way to answer “what is HighLevel” for your own agency is to get inside it and build one campaign.
1. Start your extended free trial. sevenfigureagency.com/highlevel
2. Grab our appointment funnel snapshot. When you trial through our link you can pull the exact appointment funnel we have used to close tens of millions in agency revenue directly into your account: sevenfigureagency.com/highlevel-snapshot
3. Want help implementing it? Seven Figure Agency members get our full HighLevel setup from soup to nuts, including the client acquisition funnel, the hot lead follow-up, the onboarding sequences, and the client management snapshot. Schedule your Scale Session and we will map it to your agency.
Disclosure: we are a HighLevel affiliate and may earn a commission if you sign up through the links on this page. We recommend it because we run our own agency on it.
Want more marketing tips? Check out the Seven Figure Agency podcast or follow Josh Nelson on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, or YouTube.
Related reading: 5 Ways Digital Marketing Agencies Use HighLevel to Get Better Client Results
Join Our Digital Marketing Agency Success Group on Facebook
Connect with 15,000+ other digital marketing agency owners. Share tips, ideas, and strategies for growing and scaling your Digital Marketing Agency. Click Here To Join The Facebook Group.
