After six years on HighLevel, why I’m bullish on Votel for new agencies.
HighLevel helped shape my career. I built companies, products, and an ecosystem around it. I never thought I would seriously consider moving on. I do not say this lightly: if I were starting a new agency or SaaS offer today, I would choose Votel.
Disclosure: I am a Votel affiliate. If you join through this site, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This page is my opinion, based on hands-on experience with both platforms.
If you love HighLevel, I understand. ❤️
I love the community and what the platform made possible. HighLevel’s co-founders, Shaun Clark, Varun Vairavan, and Robin Alex, are incredible people, and I have enormous respect for what they built. I spent six years inside and around HighLevel, working with thousands of agency owners. This is not an attack, and I am not telling anyone to abandon a system that works for them.
Take this for what it is: one person’s experience. You may see it differently, and that is completely fair. I still help people in the HighLevel ecosystem every day, and I still build tools around HighLevel. That is not changing. What has changed is the decision I would make for a clean start.
If I had to restart today, I would not choose HighLevel. I would choose Votel.The all-in-one dream was powerful. The experience never fully caught up.
HighLevel showed an entire generation of agencies that one platform could replace dozens of tools and become the engine of a recurring-revenue business. I believed in that vision, built around it, and helped other people do the same. But after six years, I believe the core usability problems are still creating the same struggle for too many operators. The refrain I heard most often was simple: what can we do? Nothing else offered that much at that price. Inside HighLevel, we knew frustrated users still had very few places to go. I believe Votel is the first serious change to that equation.
The hacks told me what the product was missing.
From day one, I built custom CSS and JavaScript around HighLevel to create the experience agencies wanted. Votel makes many of those decisions native.
- Dashboard themes, calendars, login pages, and navigation should not require a third-party script.
- HighLevel’s breadth made the technical friction worth accepting for years.
- Votel keeps the breadth, but the setup feels designed instead of assembled.
HighLevel · custom CSS
Votel · native themes
Login editor
Agency workspace
Real product screensCaptured September 2026
Churn starts before the client gets to the value.
In my experience, onboarding was the recurring HighLevel problem. Agencies became trainers and tech support before they could become strategic partners.
- Support teams could spend two, three, or four hours walking a new user through setup.
- Third-party onboarding services helped, but they treated the symptom instead of the core experience.
- Votel gets a new operator from idea to a usable starting point in a much shorter path.
When a product needs a team to explain it, the support process becomes part of the interface.
I will tell you when another product is better.
Even while I worked at HighLevel, I was never going to claim our Conversation AI was automatically better than a product like CloseBot. I am practical about the tool that solves the problem best.
- I know many HighLevel affiliates personally, and I believe they mean well.
- I have also seen promoters recommend a platform publicly while running their own business on other tools.
- Commission can shape anyone’s judgment, including mine. That is why I disclose the relationship and show my reasoning.
Not: which company do I know best?
Public promotion and private usage should line up.
That is the standard behind this page.
Software incidents cannot become background noise.
While I worked at HighLevel, I assembled an internal incident picture that showed outages on 26 of 30 days and called an executive meeting. What can feel routine inside a software company can be catastrophic for an agency answering to clients.
- Every interruption can break calls, messages, bookings, and client confidence.
- When Conversation AI once faced a critical bug with a three-to-four-week fix horizon, I told agencies whose business depended on it to use another vendor for that feature.
- My concern was not that software can never fail. It was that the business impact could not be normalized.
This is my firsthand account of a specific period while I worked at HighLevel. It is not a claim about HighLevel’s current uptime.
Days I flagged with an outage during that internal review period
Inside the company it can look like an incident. To an agency, it can look like a lost client.
AI first beats AI added later.
HighLevel has worked hard to bring AI around a mature platform. Votel starts from a different premise: AI is part of how the system is created and operated.
- The platform can begin with a conversation about the business instead of a blank technical workspace.
- Agents, workflows, data, and actions are meant to work as one system.
- For a new agency, that changes the learning curve and the delivery model.
Conceptual illustrationAI around the platform vs AI in the foundation
The booking experience finally feels designed.
This is one of the clearest examples of Votel’s approach: powerful controls, clean presentation, and live visual feedback without reaching for code.
- Thirty-three visual themes and four page layouts were available when we reviewed it.
- Colors, logos, covers, layouts, and booking types are configured visually.
- The finished booking page looks like part of the client’s brand.
Theme picker, layouts, and live bookingCaptured September 2026
The AI can do more than talk.
MCP tools turn an assistant into an operator. In the same observation session, our research counted 319 visible Votel tools and 36 in HighLevel.
- Actions reached across CRM, messaging, payments, workflows, forms, files, reputation, and more.
- The count is a dated observation, not a permanent promise.
- The important difference is the range of work an agent can complete without leaving the platform.
Observed in one like-for-like review session. Product counts can change.
Email should not require an engineering degree.
Votel’s email agent was brilliantly built from day one. You explain what you want to accomplish, and it handles the complexity that used to make people feel like they had to become email engineers.
- Suggest mode prepares each send and waits for your approval. Auto mode can send on its own and file a receipt.
- Hot and engaged contacts can go first, with daily sends moving through the audience in waves.
- Win-back, warmup, send windows, and send-time optimization are controlled in the same experience.
Settings, approval mode, and plain-language setupCaptured September 2026
Audit logs you can actually use.
A serious client platform needs to make activity understandable. Votel’s Activity hub turns operational history into something an agency can search, filter, export, and act on.
- Twelve log types were visible in our September 2026 review.
- Human-readable activity, filters, grouping, export, and IP visibility make troubleshooting faster.
- Deleted-contact restoration is the kind of practical detail operators appreciate.
Activity overview and detailCaptured September 2026
A website visit can become an actionable record.
Visitor identification becomes valuable when it is connected to the CRM and follow-up system, not sitting in a separate dashboard.
- Identify a returning or known visitor when the available data permits it.
- Connect the visit to a contact record and the pages that matter.
- Trigger a relevant follow-up while keeping privacy and consent requirements in view.
Example contact
Illustrative workflow with fictional dataActual identification depends on available data and consent
The meeting stays inside the client system.
Built-in video is more interesting when it connects the booking, conversation, transcript, summary, and next action.
- The customer does not have to jump across a patchwork of meeting tools.
- Conversation context can stay with the contact and opportunity.
- Summaries and action items can feed the next workflow.
Illustrative meeting workflowParticipant names are fictional
Where I see the edge today.
HighLevel remains the giant, with a mature ecosystem and years of agency investment behind it. My recommendation changes when the question is what I would choose for a new build.
I no longer think HighLevel is the automatic answer.
It is not an attack on the community or the ecosystem either. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not attack or bash other companies. My view is practical and genuine: for a new agency or business owner starting today, I believe Votel is the better choice. I say that as someone who has spent almost seven years building on and around HighLevel.
“If your engine is already on HighLevel and it works for you, fantastic. Keep building. But if you are struggling to get your SaaS off the ground, or you are starting a new agency today, I highly recommend looking at Votel first.”
Do not disrupt a healthy business just to chase something new.
That is where I believe Votel deserves your first serious look.