HighLevel vs Vendasta: Which Platform Is Built for Agencies?

If you run an agency, HighLevel vs Vendasta is one of the most important decisions you'll make. Both say they're built for you. Both let you put your own brand in front of clients.

But they're built on two very different ideas.

Vendasta gives you a catalogue. Hundreds of products you can buy at wholesale and resell to local businesses under your brand.

HighLevel (GoHighLevel, as plenty of people still call it) gives you a platform. One connected system you can white-label, package up, and sell as your own software, with as many client accounts as you can handle.

One makes you a reseller. The other makes you the owner of something.

I've run an agency. I've spent years since building apps and Snapshots that sit inside HighLevel. So I'll be honest about where Vendasta is good, and clear about why, for most agency owners I talk to, HighLevel is the better place to build.

HighLevel vs Vendasta at a glance

Here's the short version before we get into the detail. Everything in this table comes from each company's own pages, linked further down.

Look at the two marketplace rows and the templates row. That's where this comparison really gets decided.

What Vendasta is, and where it's genuinely good

Let's start with Vendasta, because it deserves a fair hearing.

Vendasta was founded in 2008 and is based in Saskatoon, Canada, with offices in Florida and India. It's been around a long time. On its homepage it says it serves "small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and the partners who support them", which means agencies, franchisors, software vendors, managed service providers and resellers.

The heart of it is the Vendasta Marketplace. It lists "250+ Digital Solutions", built so that "multiple vendors" can host their products on one platform. Partners get "wholesale prices only available to volume resellers", can resell with one click, and can launch a "white-labelled, multi-vendor store". Their line is "One store. Your brand."

Clients log into the Business App, Vendasta's white-label client portal, to see their services, reports, messages and tasks.

Where Vendasta is genuinely good

Here's my honest paragraph of credit.

If you're a reseller at heart, Vendasta is built for you. If your business is selling a wide menu of digital products to local businesses (listings, reviews, social, hosting, sales email) and you want one place to buy them at wholesale, brand them and bill for them, that's exactly what Vendasta does. Its pricing page gives every plan unlimited client accounts and users. Its local SEO and listings tools are a real strength for local-business clients. And it's built a big partner network: it says it's "Trusted by 66,000+ channel partners".

I also like its Snapshot Report. Quick warning, because the name causes confusion: Vendasta's Snapshot Report has nothing to do with a HighLevel Snapshot. It's a prospecting audit. It gives a prospect "an automated assessment" of their online marketing across eight areas (listings, reviews, social, website, SEO, advertising, ecommerce and AI optimisation), graded A to F into a Digital Score. For an agency opening conversations, that's a clever tool.

A HighLevel Snapshot is something else completely. It's a whole account setup you load into a sub-account. We'll come to that.

So Vendasta isn't a bad platform. It's a different one.

Two different ideas of what an agency platform is

This is the bit I'd want any agency owner to think hard about.

What are you actually building?

Vendasta: you resell a catalogue

With Vendasta, the products are the point. You pick from the marketplace, bundle them into "Packages" with "its own pricing, marketing materials, and purchase behavior", and sell them through your store.

The pricing reflects that. Vendasta's plans are a minimum monthly spend, not an all-in price. Each tier comes with a set number of seats. The higher tiers need a one-year contract. And "When you order a product, you're billed the wholesale price at the time of purchase." So the more you sell, the more you buy.

White-label depends on the tier. Starter is co-branded with Vendasta. Professional and above let you add your logo, rename the Business App and remove Vendasta branding.

That's a reseller model. A good one, if that's what you want.

HighLevel: you own the platform

HighLevel was built the other way round. Its stated mission from day one was to "transform digital marketing by giving agencies the tools to automate, scale and deliver stronger results".

In HighLevel's own words, "Agencies subscribe to HighLevel's platform at the agency level", each agency account can host multiple sub-accounts ("often one per SMB client"), and agencies "white-label the platform under their own branding and custom domains."

The pricing is flat at agency level, with unlimited users, and unlimited sub-accounts on the Unlimited and Agency Pro plans. Phone, email and AI usage are charged on top, and you can rebill those to clients.

Then there's SaaS mode. HighLevel's help centre says it "enables agencies to utilize the software and rebrand it as their own". In the SaaS Configurator you "Build your plans, set your pricing, select your trial", and attach Snapshots to those plans. The white-label setup removes "all traces of HighLevel branding", with your own login domain, desktop app and API domain. There's even a white-label mobile app you publish under your own Apple and Google accounts.

Read that again from an agency owner's chair.

You're not reselling someone else's products at a margin. You're running your own software company, with your own plans, your own prices and your own brand, on top of a platform that covers the whole customer journey.

It's not a shop window. It's a business you own.

Why this matters for delivery

When I ran my agency, our clients were mostly US private medical practices. We didn't just run ads. We built whole marketing systems: ads, Google, SEO, local SEO, social, content, nurture, reputation, booking and follow-up. We were judged on our clients' revenue and profit, not clicks.

You can't do that with a handful of separate products stitched together. You need the funnel, the form, the calendar, the follow-up texts, the review request and the pipeline all talking to each other.

That's what HighLevel is. One connected system. Capture, nurture, close, all in the same account.

If you're also weighing up a funnel-first tool, I've compared HighLevel vs ClickFunnels too.

HighLevel as a platform you can build on, not just resell

This is the part most comparisons skip. And for agency owners, it's the most important part.

HighLevel isn't just software you use. It's a platform other people build for. Two ways.

The HighLevel App Marketplace

The HighLevel App Marketplace says: "Browse 1500+ apps to enhance your CRM, marketing automation, and business workflows."

These aren't HighLevel's own feature toggles. They're built by independent developers. Developers register, create an app and "then publish when you're ready", following HighLevel's App Review Guidelines. Apps install into HighLevel accounts and work with what's already there.

HighLevel also takes care of the money. Developers can charge free, subscription, one-time, freemium or usage-based pricing, with free trials, and HighLevel handles payment processing and pays developers monthly. As of today it says: "We currently do not deduct any commission."

And here's the bit agency owners should notice. Agencies can resell marketplace apps to their own sub-accounts with their own markup, and the base price is hidden from those sub-accounts. Apps are also reviewed for white-label compatibility.

So yes, you can resell on HighLevel too. But what you're reselling extends a platform you already own.

Snapshots

The second way people build for HighLevel is Snapshots.

HighLevel defines them as "reusable templates that capture selected configuration assets from a HighLevel sub-account" so they can be copied into other sub-accounts.

The list of what a Snapshot can carry is long: workflows and triggers, Conversation AI and Voice AI agents, calendars, custom fields and values, pipelines, tags, funnels and websites, forms, surveys, email and text templates, dashboards, membership products, review settings, WhatsApp templates and more.

Snapshots don't carry live data. Contacts, conversations, appointments and connections like Stripe stay behind, and some things (phone numbers, integrations) need setting up after. That's sensible. You're copying the system, not someone's customers.

You can load a Snapshot into an existing sub-account, choosing which assets to bring in, or create a brand-new sub-account from one. You can share them by link. And third parties can sell Snapshots on the App Marketplace, with one-time, monthly or yearly pricing, and buyers "push the Snapshot directly to their locations through their HighLevel dashboard."

What Vendasta offers on both points

Let me be precise, because Vendasta does have a marketplace.

Vendasta's marketplace is real and it's big. Third-party vendors integrate through Vendasta's APIs and apply for distribution to its reseller network. So yes, other companies build for Vendasta.

But what they're building is a product for you to resell to your clients. It's a catalogue of separate services.

HighLevel's marketplace is different in kind. The apps install into the platform and extend it, so the same contacts, workflows and conversations get more capable. The platform gets better. You don't just get another line on the invoice.

On templates, the gap is wider. Vendasta's "Packages" are sales bundles of products, not account setups. Its "Snapshot Report" is a prospect audit, not a template. In the research I did, I found no Vendasta feature that packages up a whole account setup (pipelines, automations, funnels, forms, calendars) and loads it into another account.

HighLevel does exactly that.

For an agency owner, that's the difference between rebuilding every client from scratch and loading a proven system in one go.

How NexGenHighLevel apps help agencies get more from HighLevel

This is where we come in.

I've always said no platform is perfect. If HighLevel does 90% brilliantly and 10% is missing, that 10% is where NexGenHighLevel exists.

When I first got into HighLevel, its line was "Capture, Nurture, Close". Brilliant once someone shows interest. But I kept asking: where's the prospecting? Where's the outreach? Where's the market creation?

So we started building. Every one of our apps for HighLevel is built as part of HighLevel, using what's already there: Workflows, Contacts, Tags and Conversations. No API wrangling. No Zapier, Make or n8n. Once installed, it's part of the system.

Here are the ones that matter most for agency owners weighing up the two platforms.

LinkedIn for HighLevel: prospecting you can sell

Remember the Vendasta Snapshot Report I gave credit to? It's a good way to open conversations with local businesses.

But a lot of agencies don't sell to local businesses. They sell to B2B companies, coaches, consultants and professional firms. And those people live on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn for HighLevel was the first app we built, for one client who needed it. You search LinkedIn (or Sales Navigator) from inside the HighLevel account. You enrich results with current business email addresses. You import them as contacts. Then you put them into HighLevel Workflows to view profiles, like posts, send connection requests, send InMails and messages, even with video or voice notes.

Email enrichment was the game changer, and I'll say why. It meant users could find their ideal customer, get their email, reach them on LinkedIn and email, and nurture them, all in one place. For our first clients, outreach went up, and so did leads, sales, revenue and profit.

For agencies, there's a white-label version. You can brand it as your own and resell it to your clients.

That's prospecting as a service, sitting inside your own platform. If you want the how-to, I've written about LinkedIn prospecting in HighLevel.

HighLevel Agency Customizer: make the platform look like yours

White-label is the start. Making it feel like your product is the next step.

The HighLevel Agency Customizer is for agency owners only. It lets you customise your agency and your sub-accounts (branding, menus, languages) with no code. And you can have different themes for different sub-accounts, by SaaS plan, or by groups you create yourself. Themes are a starting point; you can change them.

So your premium clients can see one experience and your starter clients another. That's what a real software company does.

Custom Value Forms: onboarding without the chasing

Every agency owner knows this one.

You win the client. Then you need their business details, their logo, their phone number, their service areas, their offers. And you chase. And you chase again. Either you end up filling in all the Custom Values yourself, or the client never sends anything and the engagement quietly dies.

There's never a real "couldn't". It's usually a "wouldn't", or a "haven't got round to it".

Custom Value Forms gives you branded forms your clients fill in, and their answers save straight into Custom Values in their sub-account. No Zapier, no Make, no webhooks.

Onboarding is the start of delivery. Make it easy for the client and you've already done half the job.

Why Snapshots make starting on HighLevel so much easier

Let's be honest about the one thing that puts people off HighLevel.

It can do so much that a blank account feels like a lot. Where do you start? Which pipeline? Which workflows? What should the first text say?

That's what Snapshots solve.

Not all Snapshots are equal

A typical Snapshot you'll find might be a couple of funnels, a few workflows and one pipeline. It's a starter pack. Useful, but you're still building most of it yourself.

A NexGenHighLevel Snapshot is a different thing. It's a complete, fully built-out business system in a box for one niche: funnels, forms, workflows, pipelines, calendars, emails and texts, and AI features, all connected around the whole client journey, from the first enquiry to the paying customer and beyond.

I've written more about the idea in the HighLevel Snapshot as a business in a box.

Clients have used Snapshots to skip months, if not years, of trial and error building a system.

For agency owners

If you run a social media marketing agency, our SMMA Snapshot is a complete agency system for running your own business on HighLevel. Not a starter pack. Built out for one-person agencies and bigger teams alike.

And if you serve a niche, a Snapshot is how you deliver the same proven system to every client in that niche without rebuilding it each time. Our HVAC Snapshot and Credit Repair Snapshot are each built for both sides: the business owner running their own HighLevel account, and the agency serving clients in that niche.

Remember, HighLevel lets you attach Snapshots to your SaaS plans. So a new client can sign up and land in a fully built system on day one.

I found no way to do that on Vendasta, because there's no whole-account template to load. That one feature changes how fast an agency can grow.

It's not about having more tools. It's about not starting from scratch.

HighLevel's growth vs Vendasta over the last five years

Numbers next. I'll only use figures each company or reputable press has published, with the year. Both companies are private, so neither publishes full accounts.

First, credit where it's due: Vendasta is older, and on some measures bigger. It's been going since 2008. It says it has 66,000+ channel partners and has helped 8.2 million+ local businesses. Those are big numbers, and they're worth respecting.

But look at the direction of travel.

A few simple sums, using published figures only.

HighLevel's customers went from 10,000+ in 2021 to about 110,000 in October 2025. That's roughly eleven times in four years.

The small businesses on HighLevel went from over 300,000 in November 2021 to over 2 million in 2025. More than six times.

HighLevel's team went from 26 in 2019 to more than 1,800 by October 2025. Vendasta's went from 285 in 2019 to more than 750 by October 2023. Different end years, so don't read too much into the exact ratio. But one grew from a much smaller base, much faster.

The outside rankings tell the same story. HighLevel ranked No. 47 on the 2023 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for North America, with revenue growth of 3,362% from 2019 to 2022. It was on the Inc. 5000 for the third year running in 2025, with 781% three-year revenue growth.

And funding. Vendasta has raised more outside money: $40 million in 2019, C$119.5 million in 2021, and a C$20 million Series E in 2023. HighLevel raised over $60 million from PeakEquity Partners in 2021 and took a minority investment from General Atlantic in 2024, with the co-founders still the largest shareholders.

So here's how I read it. Vendasta is a long-established reseller network with a big footprint in local business. HighLevel is the younger platform that has grown faster, stayed profitable by its own account, and built its momentum around agencies.

When you're choosing where to build your agency for the next five years, momentum matters.

Who should choose Vendasta, and who should choose HighLevel

Fair to both.

Vendasta could suit you if:

• Your business model is reselling a wide menu of digital products to local businesses.
• You want to buy those products at wholesale from one place and sell them through a branded store.
• Listings, local SEO and reputation are the core of what you sell.
• You're comfortable with a minimum monthly spend and a contract on the white-label tiers.

HighLevel suits you better if:

• You want to own your platform, not just resell other people's products.
• You want to deliver whole systems (funnels, follow-up, calendars, reviews, pipelines, AI) inside one connected account.
• You want to sell your own software under your own brand, with your own plans and prices, through SaaS mode.
• You want flat agency pricing with unlimited users, and unlimited sub-accounts on the right plan.
• You want to load proven systems into new accounts with Snapshots instead of rebuilding.
• You want a marketplace of apps that make the platform itself more capable.

For most agency owners I talk to, that second list is the one that describes the business they're trying to build. Which is why, for them, HighLevel is the Vendasta alternative worth looking at first.

If you're also comparing other all-in-one platforms, I've done HighLevel vs Kartra too.

Switching from Vendasta to HighLevel

Moving platforms sounds scarier than it is. Here's what it looks like in practice.

1. Export your client contacts. Take your contact lists out of Vendasta and import them into HighLevel sub-accounts, one per client.
2. Stand up the system. Either rebuild your client setups in HighLevel, or load a Snapshot. A Snapshot is the fastest way to get a new account working: the funnels, forms, workflows, pipelines and calendars arrive together.
3. Connect phone and email. Set up numbers, email sending and any integrations in each sub-account. Remember, Snapshots don't move phone numbers or connections, so this step is always done fresh.
4. Set up your white-label and SaaS plans. Your domain, your branding, your plans and prices. Attach your Snapshots to your plans.
5. Run both for a short overlap. Keep the old services running while you check the new system is working, then move clients across in batches.

Walk before you run. And even when you're ready to run, keep walking for a little bit longer. A careful switch beats a fast one that loses you a client.

Getting HighLevel through NexGenHighLevel

If you'd like some help, you can get HighLevel through NexGenHighLevel.

Here's what you get when you sign up under our agency:

• Over 200 HighLevel training courses.
• Access to all our Apps for HighLevel, our live apps and future releases.
• 24/7 support and personalised, one-to-one onboarding.
• A full HighLevel sub-account under our agency, and a free Snapshot from NexGenHighLevel.

It's just how we'd want to be looked after if we were starting out. You can read more about who we are and why we build.

Frequently asked questions

Is HighLevel better than Vendasta for agencies?

For most agencies building their own platform, yes. Both offer unlimited client accounts and white-label. But HighLevel adds native funnels, calendars, courses and a full CRM in one connected system, plus SaaS mode to sell it as your own software, Snapshots to load whole account setups, and an App Marketplace of 1,500+ apps. Vendasta is stronger if your model is reselling a catalogue of wholesale products to local businesses.

Is GoHighLevel cheaper than Vendasta?

The pricing models are different, so it depends on how you sell. GoHighLevel charges a flat agency price with unlimited users, plus usage for phone, email and AI, which you can rebill to clients. Vendasta charges a minimum monthly platform spend by tier, with seat limits and contracts on higher tiers, and bills each product you order at wholesale on top.

Does Vendasta have white-label?

Yes. Vendasta's Starter plan is co-branded with Vendasta. Professional and higher tiers let you add your logo, rename the Business App client portal and remove Vendasta branding. HighLevel also offers white-label, removing all HighLevel branding with your own domain and desktop app, plus SaaS mode so you can build your own plans and pricing and sell the platform as your own.

Is Vendasta's Snapshot Report the same as a HighLevel Snapshot?

No, and it's easy to mix them up. Vendasta's Snapshot Report is a prospecting audit that grades a business's online marketing A to F across eight areas. A HighLevel Snapshot is a reusable template of a whole sub-account's setup (funnels, workflows, pipelines, calendars, forms, templates and more) that you load into another account so it's ready to use.

Can I migrate from Vendasta to HighLevel?

Yes. Export your contacts, import them into HighLevel sub-accounts, then rebuild your setups or load a Snapshot to get each account working quickly. Connect phone numbers and email, set up your white-label branding and SaaS plans, and run both platforms side by side for a short overlap. If you get HighLevel through NexGenHighLevel, you get one-to-one onboarding to help.

What is the best Vendasta alternative for agency owners?

For agency owners who want to own their platform rather than resell a catalogue, HighLevel is the obvious Vendasta alternative. You get unlimited sub-accounts on the right plan, white-label and SaaS mode, Snapshots and a growing App Marketplace. Sign up through NexGenHighLevel and you also get 200+ training courses, our apps, 24/7 support and a free Snapshot.

The platform you own vs the catalogue you sell

Vendasta vs HighLevel isn't really a question about features. It's a question about what kind of agency you want to run.

Vendasta is a good home for a reseller. A big catalogue, wholesale prices, a branded store.

HighLevel is a home for an owner. One connected system that covers the whole client journey. Your brand on all of it. Your own plans and prices. Snapshots that load a working business into a new account. And an App Marketplace full of developers, us included, making the platform more capable.

I came back to technology to solve marketing problems, not for technology's own sake. GoHighLevel is where I chose to build. I think it's where most agency owners should too.

If you're ready to try it, start your HighLevel account with us and we'll help you get set up properly.

Don't just resell the future. Own a piece of it.