The Santa Barbara Web Design and Marketing Blog

Welcome to Tech Thursday: Building the Foundation for Your Funnel with High Level

Today, we’re diving deeply into a hands-on walkthrough of setting up your very first funnel and website environment in High Level – a powerful all-in-one marketing platform praised for its flexibility, scalability, and ease of use. This guide is for marketers, business owners, and anyone interested in launching online campaigns, digital courses, or membership sites quickly and efficiently.

In this post, I’ll chronicle my process as I embark on building out not just one, but at least three different funnels and websites. Whether you’re a first-timer feeling a bit overwhelmed by the tech, or a seasoned pro seeking to refine your workflow, I hope you'll find some valuable insights in my journey. Most importantly, you’ll see real-world trouble-shooting—because even with 30 years of experience and hundreds of websites behind me, things don’t always go perfectly on the first try!

Let’s get started.

Why Choose High Level for Funnels & Membership Sites?

Before jumping in, let’s recap why I’ve selected High Level for these projects—and why you might consider it for yours.

High Level is an all-encompassing marketing automation and CRM platform. It brings together tools for building websites, creating sales funnels, hosting membership programs, automating email and SMS campaigns, and integrating with a variety of other software. What I particularly appreciate about High Level is its template and subaccount system: you can build out an entire campaign, save it as a snapshot, and then easily duplicate and customize it for new projects, clients, or business divisions. This modular approach replaces the old days of building every site and funnel from scratch, making scaling much faster and easier.

Another bonus: if you use my referral link (see below), you’ll get an extended 30-day free trial, instead of the usual 14 days. That’s more than enough time to follow my step-by-step process and put together your own marketing campaign or course site.

Getting Started: Creating Your Subaccount

First, after logging into High Level, you’ll notice your main account dashboard. I’ve already got a company account running, but for a new funnel or project, best practice is to set up a dedicated subaccount. Subaccounts function like independent workspaces, each keeping its own data, campaigns, integrations, and users separate. This is vital for organizing campaigns for different audiences, products, or—even better—if your agency builds sites for multiple clients.

To create a subaccount, click on the “Subaccount” area in your dashboard. You'll see options to either start from scratch or use existing templates. Templates are especially useful in High Level, since they can include pre-built automations, autoresponder sequences, and more. But today, I’m starting with a blank snapshot because I want to show you the foundational steps.

You’ll be asked for some basic info—email, business name, address, phone number, niche, etc. Even if this is an incubation project we plan to rebrand or transfer later, just use your own contact details for now; they’re easily updated.

For this example, I’m setting up a new project called “Fight SEO”—a name you’ll hear more about in my upcoming marketing videos, as I demonstrate various strategies and automations.

While plugging in details, you’ll also notice that High Level allows you to select your business “Niche.” This is more for their internal practice and template recommendations but can also speed up deployment if you opt for suggested automations.

Notably, High Level has robust integrations with communication tools like Twilio (for SMS/phone) and built-in payment solutions. I recommend assigning unique phone numbers and domains for each campaign—critical for tracking results and attribution.

Adding Your Domain – An Essential Step

Once your subaccount is created, you’ll be prompted to connect your own domain. This is an indispensable part of establishing a professional presence; you don’t want to run your campaigns on a subdomain of someone else’s brand.

High Level streamlines domain integration, especially if your domain is hosted with GoDaddy—my personal favorite among registrars. GoDaddy might not have the best web hosting, but their domain management is efficient, affordable, and user-friendly.

From your subaccount, navigate to the “Sites” tab to start the domain attachment process. You’ll be guided to enter your domain, after which High Level tries to automatically connect with your registrar. For GoDaddy, this usually means logging into your account and authorizing access so High Level can set up all necessary DNS entries (like the CNAME for www aliasing).

Occasionally, you may hit a snag here. For instance, propagation delays—meaning, the time it takes for DNS changes to permeate through the internet—can vary. Even after making a change in GoDaddy, High Level might not immediately see the update. This is normal; most changes “go live” within an hour, but some registrars (no naming and shaming here) can take 24-48 hours or longer.

When setting DNS records yourself, as I had to during this demo, you’ll deal primarily with CNAME records. If this sounds intimidating, just remember: CNAME sets up aliases, such that www.fightseo.com (with “www.”) points to fightseo.com (without it), or to a special High Level endpoint. Always double-check for typos and set the TTL (time to live) as low as possible (600 seconds/10 minutes, if available). This speeds up propagation.

Navigating Technical Hiccups

It’s important for me to show my troubleshooting process, not just the “success” reel. Even as a developer with decades of experience, connecting domains can sometimes hit snags. High Level might report that the records aren’t correct even if all seems okay in your registrar. Don’t panic—this almost always resolves itself within an hour or so, sometimes less.

If the system keeps failing to verify, manually run through the following:

- Double-check the CNAME and other DNS entries in your registrar.

- Confirm there are no typos or old conflicting records.

- Wait 15-60 minutes and retry verification.

- Clear any browser cache and log out/in again.

If you feel stuck, High Level’s support is responsive, and community forums are filled with people experiencing—and resolving—the same little bumps. Remember: persistence and patience matter more than technical perfection.

Subaccounts, Templates, and Scaling Multiple Campaigns

A massive timesaver in High Level is the way it handles templates and subaccounts. Each subaccount is a container for a marketing campaign. If you’re running multiple businesses, products, or serving multiple clients, each gets their own subaccount—no messy mixing of leads or assets. And because each subaccount works off of templates, you can create a “gold standard” campaign and then simply duplicate it for each new offer or customer.

Let’s say you run a web design agency. You can set up a highly effective funnel—complete with landing pages, email sequences, automations, and CRM integrations—for a generic “lead capture” scenario. Once perfected, this becomes your master template. For each new client, spin up a fresh subaccount, duplicate your template, do a few tweaks, swap out branding, and launch in a fraction of the time it would’ve taken to rebuild from scratch.

This setup is also highly advantageous if you ever plan to sell a website, funnel, or digital course. Transfer the subaccount to the new owner, and they can insert their own payment details and manage billing without you needing to modify the infrastructure or risk exposing your own information.

Integrations and Site Settings: Powering Up Your Funnel

With your domain verified and subaccount ready, head to the “Sites” section. You’ll see options for adding pages, forms, surveys, chat widgets, and other conversion tools. High Level shines in giving you everything you need to build:

- Landing pages and sales funnels

- Membership and course portals

- Contact forms and lead magnets

- Automated follow-up sequences (email/sms)

- Integrated appointment scheduling

- Customer pipelines

Click the gear icon (“settings”) to access integrations. These can include:

- Payment processors (e.g., Stripe, PayPal)

- Conversation providers (chatbots, live chat)

- Email marketing services

- Phone/SMS numbers (e.g., via Twilio)

- Calendar apps and CRM tools

Don’t skip adding your payment processor, especially if your funnel will handle sales or subscriptions for membership sites or digital courses. Connecting Stripe or PayPal upfront saves headaches later.

If you haven’t built your actual funnel yet (as was the case in this walkthrough), you don’t have to assign a default funnel to the domain right away—you can always go back and link your published pages to the domain in a few clicks.

Membership Areas and Online Learning

One increasingly popular use case for High Level is online learning and membership sites. You can build an entire course platform—including video hosting, lesson management, and gated content—directly within your subaccount. Combined with integrated payment, automation, and communications, you have a turnkey system for selling knowledge or community access.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll guide you through constructing a live membership site—from layout and lesson organization to payment setup, onboarding sequences, and subscriber management.

Wrapping Up: Attitude Matters as Much as Tech

If today’s walkthrough shows anything, it’s this: even with great tools, technical hiccups are part of the journey. Don’t be discouraged if something doesn’t connect the first time, or a verification takes longer than expected. What sets successful digital entrepreneurs apart is not a flawless technical record, but resilience, a problem-solving mindset, and a willingness to keep moving forward.

After a short wait, our new domain verified successfully. The infrastructure for “Fight SEO” is now ready—domain pointed, subaccount built, integrations ready for action. We’re set up for all the next steps: designing high-converting funnels, building membership platforms, integrating with marketing automations, and, ultimately, launching or selling the sites as standalone products.

If you’re following along, take a moment to celebrate this foundational step—even (especially!) if it took a few tries. Every time you set up a domain, configure a funnel, or solve a DNS puzzle, you’re building skills that compound and pay dividends the further you go.

What’s Next?

Join me in future installments as I build out these funnels step by step, explore automation tools, and share exclusive training on High Level, web design, and AI-powered marketing strategies.

Be sure to use the special link if you’re starting your own journey with High Level to secure your free 30-day trial, and subscribe or follow for updates, training videos, and webinars.

Until next time, keep building and keep learning—the only way forward is through!

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SB Web Guy

Santa Barbara, California

Your Partner in Web Design, Marketing Automation, & Tech Empowerment