Setting Up Your Agency Sub-Account

This is the foundation. Before you sell anything, before you onboard anyone, your agency account needs to be configured properly. Most agency owners rush through this and spend months cleaning up mistakes that should have been handled on day one. DNS issues, compliance rejections, payment processing gaps, deliverability problems. All of it traces back to a sloppy setup.

This playbook walks you through the ten things you configure before your first client ever sees a login screen.

Step 1: Choose Your Plan Level

GoHighLevel has multiple plan levels. The one you pick determines what you can do: specifically whether you can white-label, resell, and run SaaS mode. Don’t start on the cheapest plan thinking you’ll upgrade later. If you’re building an agency, you need the plan that supports sub-accounts, white-labeling, and SaaS mode from day one. Upgrading later means reconfiguring things you already set up.

Understand what you’re paying for: the platform fee, per-sub-account costs, phone/SMS usage, and AI usage are all separate line items. Know the numbers before you commit.

No element links. This is an account-level decision outside the platform’s feature set.

Step 2: Turn On SaaS Mode

SaaS mode is what turns GoHighLevel from a tool you use into a platform you sell. It lets you create sub-accounts for clients, set custom pricing plans, control usage limits, and bill clients directly through Stripe. Without it, you’re just a user. With it, you’re running a software business.

Enable it early. Everything else in this playbook assumes SaaS mode is on.

Where this connects:

• SaaS Mode: how to enable, configure plans, and manage client billing

Step 3: White-Label Configuration

This is where the platform stops looking like GoHighLevel and starts looking like yours. Custom domain, your logo, your brand colors, your login page. Your clients should never see the GoHighLevel name anywhere. As far as they know, they’re logging into your platform.

Set up a custom domain for the client-facing portal. Upload your logo. Match your brand colors. Configure the login page so it feels like your product from the first interaction.

Where this connects:

• White Label: custom branding, domains, client-facing portal configuration

Step 4: A2P Compliance

This is the one that trips up more new agencies than anything else. A2P (Application-to-Person) compliance is the 10DLC registration process with mobile carriers that allows your sub-accounts to send SMS messages. Without it, your clients’ text messages won’t deliver reliably. Or at all.

GoHighLevel has its own internal A2P registration flow, and it works. But if you want to skip the friction and get through the process faster, use a2pwizard.com. It’s the preferred shortcut for our agency. It walks you through the registration, handles the carrier submissions, and gets you approved without the back-and-forth that the native process sometimes involves.

You’ll need your client’s EIN, their exact legal business name as it appears on the EIN letter, and their business address. Get this right the first time. Carrier rejections because of a name mismatch cost you weeks.

Where this connects:

• A2P Registration: the compliance process and why it matters
• EIN Verification: collecting the right legal details
• Carrier Approval: the review and approval timeline

Step 5: Phone System Setup

GoHighLevel uses LC Phone (powered by Twilio infrastructure) for voice and SMS. You need to buy at least one phone number to start. This is the number your agency uses, not a client number. Client numbers come later during onboarding.

Purchase a local number. Complete the identity validation. Understand the per-minute costs for calls and the per-segment costs for SMS. These are usage-based charges on top of your platform fee, and they’re what you’ll mark up when you rebill clients.

Where this connects:

• Phone & Call Tracking: buying numbers, call tracking, per-minute costs

Step 6: Payment Processing

Connect Stripe. This is non-negotiable. Stripe handles how you collect money from clients: setup fees, monthly recurring, one-time payments, everything. Without it connected, you can’t collect payment inside the platform.

Set up your products and pricing in GHL so they match your package structure. When you close a deal, you want to be able to send a payment link or collect live, not scrambling to create an invoice on the fly.

Where this connects:

• Stripe Integration: connecting and configuring Stripe
• Products & Pricing: creating your service packages in GHL
• Payment Links: generating shareable payment links
• Invoicing: for clients who need formal invoices

Step 7: Email Sending Domain

If you skip this step, your emails will end up in spam. Set up a dedicated sending domain with proper DKIM and SPF records before you send a single email from the platform. This protects your deliverability and your clients’ deliverability from day one.

Don’t use your primary business domain for cold outreach or high-volume sending. Set up a separate subdomain specifically for GHL email traffic. This isolates your sender reputation so one bad campaign doesn’t burn your entire domain.

Where this connects:

• Deliverability Tools: DKIM/SPF setup, dedicated domains, reputation monitoring

Step 8: Your Agency Operating Account

Your first sub-account is not a client account. It’s yours. This is where you run your own agency: your CRM, your pipeline, your conversations, your contacts. You should be eating your own dog food.

Set up your contact manager, build your sales pipeline (you’ll use this in the First Five Clients playbook), and configure your conversations inbox. If you’re not running your agency on the same platform you’re selling, you’re asking clients to trust something you don’t use yourself.

Where this connects:

• Contact Manager: your own contact database
• Pipeline Builder: your agency’s sales pipeline

Step 9: User Roles and Permissions

If you have a team member, a VA, or anyone who needs access to your agency account, set up their user role before you hand them credentials. GHL has role-based permissions that control what each user can see, edit, and manage. Don’t give everyone admin access. Give people access to exactly what they need for their role and nothing more.

This becomes critical as you grow. The permissions you set now become the template for how you manage access across client sub-accounts too.

No element links. This is a Settings > My Staff configuration step.

Step 10: Rebilling Setup

This is where you turn GHL from a cost center into a profit center. Rebilling lets you mark up platform usage and charge clients for it. AI Employee usage, phone minutes, SMS costs, sub-account fees. All of it can be passed through to clients at your margin.

Configure your rebilling rates in the agency reselling settings. Decide whether you’re going to offer the $97/month unlimited AI plan to clients or bill them per usage. Understand the difference: per-usage gives you higher margins on light users, unlimited gives you predictability and an easier sell.

The goal is that every client sub-account generates more in rebilling revenue than it costs you to operate.

Where this connects:

• SaaS Mode: the rebilling infrastructure
• AI Employee: the AI suite you resell to clients

The Sequence at a Glance

What This Playbook Does NOT Cover

• How to sell your services (see Your First Five Clients)
• How to onboard a client after the sale (see the Client Onboarding table)
• How to build workflows and automations (future playbooks)
• How to set up Voice AI or Conversation AI (future playbook: Your AI Receptionist)

This playbook gets your agency account configured properly so that when you do close your first client, you’re not scrambling to set up the basics. The foundation is already there.