HighLevel released their AI Employee in October 2024. Since then, one of the main questions we’ve received is:
How are you guys different from what HighLevel offers?
This blog is the third in a series comparing CloseBot and HighLevel. We previously compared quality HERE and pricing HERE. In this article we focus on analyzing some of HighLevel’s top feature requests and how CloseBot compares. *Spoiler Alert* You’re going to see considerably more features with CloseBot because of faster innovation cycles.
CloseBot vs HighLevel: Side-by-Side Feature Comparison Table
| Feature | HighLevel | CloseBot |
|---|---|---|
| Email Channel | ❌ | ✅ |
| Own Your Own API Keys | ❌ | ✅ |
| Multiple Calendar Booking | ❌ | ✅ |
| Thinking Indicator on Chat | ❌ | ✅ |
| Notifications at Conversation Milestones | ❌ | ✅ |
| Keep Knowledge Base Auto-Updated | ❌ | ✅ |
| Send a Summary | ❌ | ✅ |
| Custom Values in Q&A | ❌ | ✅ |
| Send Images | ❌ | ⏰ |
| Listen to Audio Messages | ❌ | ⏰ |
| Webhook Integration for External Data | ❌ | ✅ |
| Add Support for Other AI Providers | ❌ | ✅ |
| Hidden Prompts from Clients | ❌ | ✅ |
| AI View and Analyze Images | ❌ | ✅ |
| Objectives “like CloseBot” | ❌ | ✅ |
| Chat Widget Channel | ❌ | ✅ |
| Typos and Message Breakup | ❌ | ✅ |
Detailed Comparison
1. Email Channel – 333 votes
The ability to use the AI to respond to emails, making sure that they reply in-thread with the inbound email.
✅ CloseBot – released July 2024
❌ HighLevel
You can see here that this has been voted on 333 times since being requested in 2023. This has been a pivotal feature for CloseBot for over a year. CloseBot’s AI has automated requests to hundreds of thousands of emails. With our focus on AI alone, we are quickly able to see where innovation is happening in the industry, test to determine best practices, and release updates that don’t break existing features.
Learn more about getting your CloseBot account replying on various channels like email HERE.
2. Own Your API Keys – 250 votes
You’re able to use your own API keys… CloseBot charges a flat $0.006/message to cover our costs on top of your token costs. Transparency and super low pricing.
✅ CloseBot – released December 2022
❌ HighLevel
This request has been voted on 250 times since being requested in September 2023. Costs vary depending on how much instruction you’re giving to the AI, but token fees + $0.006 is well under what HighLevel charges on their usage based pricing. Especially since CloseBot doesn’t limit you to OpenAI… you can even use providers like Gemini that are much cheaper. See more about that pricing comparison HERE.
Learn how CloseBot agencies can set up their own AI Providers HERE.
3. Multiple Calendar Booking – 147 votes
CloseBot has had ways to book conversationally to multiple calendars since we first rolled out conversational calendar booking. CloseBot can even conversationally cancel and reschedule on multiple calendars.
✅ CloseBot – released October 2023
❌ HighLevel
Conversational booking is complex… conversational booking to multiple calendars is more complex… allowing rescheduling and cancellations as well is expert-level. At CloseBot, we truly are experts in this field of AI lead qualification and booking. We have accomplished the impossible with some of our features like this one and HighLevel is still trying to catch up to things like this that are foundational.
Learn how to conversationally book to different calendars in different ways HERE.
4. Thinking Indicator on Chat – 127 votes
This has always been a huge deal for our users. We wanted a way to show the three dots “…” when their AI was “thinking”. This wasn’t possible until HighLevel released the update to their API documentation in July 2023… we implemented this feature that day.
✅ CloseBot – released July 2023
❌ HighLevel
How many leads do you think you love from having a chat widget that doesn’t give any feedback to the lead about a response that’s coming?… A lot. CloseBot users have enjoyed this feature for two years now, enjoying a massive bump in conversion rates on website traffic just because of the famous thinking feature. There’s nothing extra you have to do to get this working with CloseBot… it just works.
5. Notifications at Conversation Milestones – 123 votes
It makes sense that users would like to know when a contact reaches a certain milestone. With large prompt agent building (the format that HighLevel follows), it’s impossible to do this reliably. This has always been easy to do with CloseBot.
✅ CloseBot – released December 2022
❌ HighLevel
CloseBot allows you to build with job flows, but we have always been an objective-based AI builder. This gives you greater control over the conversation and gives you visibility into the checkpoints. See more about why job flow building is a no-brainer HERE.
6. Keep Knowledge Base Auto-Updated – 93 votes
The beautiful thing about websites is that you can update them… new blogs, new products, new content. With HighLevel you have to re-scrape any time there are site updates. Not with CloseBot.
✅ CloseBot – released June 2025
❌ HighLevel
When you scrape a website within CloseBot’s knowledge base, our work doesn’t end there. We check that website for updates every day, and we update the knowledge base automatically if we find any updates! Huge headache with other systems… piece of cake for CloseBot.
7. Send a Summary – 93 votes
Summarizing AI conversations is essential… if you’re conversationally booking appointments for clients with AI, they don’t want to read through the entire chat before an appointment. They want quick, actionable notes.
✅ CloseBot – released June 2025
❌ HighLevel
CloseBot’s new release allows you to make use of various types of nodes. One of these is the Save Conversation node which allows you to either save the full transcript or a summary of the conversation to any contact field you want.
8. Custom Values in Q&A – 64 votes
Utilization of Custom Values within the agent’s knowledge is huge. This is why we let you use Custom Values and Contact fields anywhere throughout the job settings.
✅ CloseBot – released February 2023
❌ HighLevel
Using Custom Values is simple with CloseBot. Simply click the “+” anywhere within the job flow fields and you’ll see an array of variables that you have access to.
9. Send Images – 64 votes
Imagine being able to send an image of a business if someone asks for instructions to a specific location, or determining the type of floorplan someone is interested in and sending them an image of it. This is what’s coming sooner than you think (if you’re using CloseBot)
⏰ CloseBot – scheduled August 2025
❌ HighLevel
There are points in a conversation where you may want to allow the AI to send an image. This has been a highly requested feature for both CloseBot and HighLevel. Now that our V2 product is released, these are the kinds of features that will be easy for us to implement, which is why we plan to release this feature in the coming weeks! 👏
10. Listen to Audio Messages – 50 votes
WhatsApp is a huge conversation channel for many outside of the US and audio messages on this channel are common. The ability to have the AI listen to and respond to these messages is huge.
⏰ CloseBot – scheduled August 2025
❌ HighLevel
Currently neither CloseBot nor HighLevel can do this, but this is one of the next items up on CloseBot’s roadmap for release. It’s easy for CloseBot to execute on innovations like this quickly now that our flagship V2 product is released!
11. Webhook Integration for External Data – 50 votes
It’s a common need for AI systems to pull in external information within a lead qualification journey. HighLevel has no way to do this currently except through side-process workflows that break often.
✅ CloseBot – released June 2025
❌ HighLevel
CloseBot released a webhook action for the job flow builder upon V2 launch and it has been a game-changer for agencies. Possibilities are endless when you can pull in data from external tools like N8N, Zapier, or anything else in the middle of a conversation.
Learn more about how CloseBot uses webhook integrations HERE.
12. Add Support for Other AI Providers – 38 votes
HighLevel committed to OpenAI early, CloseBot did not. We knew from the beginning that committing to one AI Provider would make development easier, but we don’t do things because they’re easy… we do things that drive results.
✅ CloseBot – released May 2024
❌ HighLevel
Over a year ago CloseBot added support for Anthropic (Claude). Now CloseBot supports 5 AI Providers… Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Grok. Learn about some of the differences between those HERE. This means you get to pick the one that you prefer, but it also means that downtime with one provider doesn’t affect you or your clients. Set fallback options and you’re still in business even when OpenAI goes down!
Learn how easy it is to get started with other AI Providers with a free CloseBot account HERE.
13. Hidden Prompts from Clients – 35 votes
It became very clear to us while building CloseBot Classic that the most successful agencies were the ones who wanted to protect the Intellectual Property (IP) of their setups. In the age of AI, that means your prompts. HighLevel doesn’t allow you to protect your prompts, while CloseBot is built for protection.
✅ CloseBot – released June 2025
❌ HighLevel
CloseBot is optimized for Agency control. You build and control the agents. You re-bill usage. Your clients see a friendly client-centric interface where they can track their success metrics from agents that you provide.
Learn more about our Agency Account HERE.
14. AI View and Analyze Images – 26 votes
There are scenarios where leads send you images. Tattoo shops, repair, etc. Your clients that get images are dead in the water unless your AI can respond to these images intelligently.
✅ CloseBot – released July 2025
❌ HighLevel
CloseBot released image recognition recently only because we wanted to wait for our V2 release to build in more features like this. CloseBot has already analyzed thousands of images sent in from leads that would have gotten no response from HighLevel’s Conversational AI.
Nothing needs to be done to get this feature to work with CloseBot… it just works.
15. Objectives “like CloseBot” – 26 votes
CloseBot coined the term AI Objective in December 2022 and several other systems have followed suit. HighLevel is one of the next ones to follow our lead on objectives.
✅ CloseBot – released December 2022
❌ HighLevel
Objective-based prompting keeps the AI aligned. It drastically improves the performance of the AI at scale. We have users conversationally booking more than 100 appointments per day. To manage that kind of volume, you need something that works reliably… and that’s where CloseBot comes in. This is also why CloseBot is booking about 3.5x more appointments conversationally than HighLevel’s own conversational AI. See more on that HERE.
See how easy it is to get rolling with our new Job Flow builder HERE! Even available on free accounts.
16. Chat Widget Channel – 20 votes
HighLevel previously only had the Chat Widget (not to be confused with Live Chat). A lead could send a message through the Chat Widget after providing their phone number, and get a response via text message. A lot of people still use this.
✅ CloseBot – released February 2023
❌ HighLevel
Like email, this is another channel of communication that isn’t yet supported by HighLevel that is supported by CloseBot. Don’t limit yourself and your clients. Use a tool that supports all of the channels you need.
Getting your CloseBot Agent to respond via the Chat Widget is as simple as adding it to the channel list like this HERE.
17. Typos and Message Breakup – 2 votes
Features that we found to be trivial still haven’t been implemented within the HighLevel. These small updates make a huge impact. AI that sometimes makes typos and breaks up larger messages into smaller ones like a human would? This makes a difference in your lead qualification success rate.
✅ CloseBot – released July 2024
❌ HighLevel
It’s a dead giveaway that you’re speaking with AI when they keep sending huge blocks of text, always perfectly written. The quality comes off as cold and inhuman and your leads get cold feet. CloseBot goes the extra mile to make the interaction as human as possible.
Learn how you can make your CloseBot Persona break up large messages and include occasional typos HERE.
Summary
If you’ve read this far, congratulations. How much more money do you think you could make for you and your clients with these extra features and more? Believe it or not, these were only some of the many features listed that HighLevel doesn’t do that CloseBot does within their feature requests. This list isn’t getting smaller, it’s growing. Since the beginning there have been HighLevel users waiting until HighLevel catches up, but many are now realizing that CloseBot is the way to go if you’re serious about having an AI Agent Operating System that’s as robust as you are.
We love HighLevel, we are the #1 Sub-Account App within the HighLevel Marketplace. Most of our beloved users are using HighLevel as their CRM. This post is written to show you that there are apps like CloseBot that can launch you ahead of the competition you have by using marketplace tools 🙂 Get started with your free account today!