Neil Patel and HighLevel: Why He Calls It One of the Most Important AI Platforms for Small Business

Neil Patel has spent much of his career identifying where digital marketing is heading next.

So when he describes HighLevel as:

“One of the most important AI transformation platforms serving and scaling small and medium businesses today.”

…I think it’s worth paying attention.

Patel made the statement following the announcement of a multi-year strategic partnership between himself, NP Digital and HighLevel.

You can read the Neil Patel and HighLevel partnership announcement on PR Newswire here.

But what particularly caught my attention wasn’t simply that Neil Patel had partnered with HighLevel.

It was his choice of words.

He didn’t describe HighLevel as a CRM.

He called it an AI transformation platform.

And I think that distinction is becoming increasingly important.

Neil Patel’s Partnership With HighLevel

The relationship goes considerably further than Neil Patel simply providing a testimonial for HighLevel.

According to the partnership announcement, Patel and NP Digital will collaborate with HighLevel across areas including its product and AI roadmap, AI and SEO features, content, international expansion and events.

Patel said:

“In 2026, it’s time we start calling them what they are. One of the most important AI transformation platforms serving and scaling small and medium businesses today.”

That’s quite a statement.

But perhaps it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise when you look at what has been happening with HighLevel.

I Predicted HighLevel Could Become the WordPress of CRM Systems

Some time ago, I wrote an article called:

Prediction: HighLevel = The WordPress of CRM Systems

My argument wasn’t that HighLevel and WordPress do the same thing.

It was about what WordPress became.

WordPress grew from relatively humble beginnings into a platform upon which an enormous ecosystem was built.

Themes.

Plugins.

Developers.

Agencies.

Specialists.

Third-party integrations.

Entire businesses built around the platform.

Most importantly, WordPress became ubiquitous.

My prediction was that we could eventually see something similar happen with HighLevel in the CRM and marketing automation market.

HighLevel provides the core platform. Agencies, consultants, developers and businesses then customise it for an almost infinite number of applications.

At the time, that was very much a prediction.

But some of the numbers we’re now hearing from HighLevel itself make that prediction considerably more interesting.

HighLevel Second Only to Salesforce?

HighLevel co-founder and CEO Shaun Clark recently said that HighLevel is now the second-largest CRM in the world behind Salesforce, and that the company is growing at more than 50% year-on-year.

I’ve looked at his comments and the context behind them in another article:

HighLevel Is Now the World’s Second-Largest CRM, Behind Salesforce, Says CEO Shaun Clark

There is an important qualification.

These are Shaun Clark’s own figures rather than independently verified CRM market-share statistics.

But if HighLevel is operating at anything approaching the scale Clark describes, my WordPress comparison starts to look rather interesting.

Because becoming the WordPress of CRM systems isn’t simply about having lots of features.

It’s about reaching the point where a platform develops the scale, flexibility, ecosystem and momentum to become one of the default foundations upon which businesses build.

And HighLevel increasingly appears to be heading in that direction.

But I now think something even bigger is happening.

Is HighLevel Still Really a CRM?

I’ve worked with CRM and marketing automation since 2009.

I started with Infusionsoft, which at the time was an extraordinarily powerful combination of CRM, email marketing and marketing automation for small businesses.

Over the years I’ve watched CRM platforms become progressively more sophisticated.

But what is happening now feels different.

HighLevel today encompasses CRM, email, SMS, WhatsApp, websites, funnels, calendars, pipelines, payments, events, courses, communities, reputation management, advertising, workflow automation and much more.

And increasingly sitting across all of this is AI.

That’s why I’ve started describing HighLevel differently.

HighLevel as the AI Operating System for a Business

I’ve written about this idea in more detail here:

HighLevel Is Becoming the AI Operating System for Your Marketing and Business

Right now, much of the conversation about artificial intelligence focuses on individual tools.

ChatGPT.

AI chatbots.

AI receptionists.

AI website builders.

AI content generators.

AI sales assistants.

These can all be incredibly useful.

But I don’t think individual AI tools are the really interesting development.

The interesting part is what happens when AI becomes connected to the underlying systems and data running the business.

That’s where the idea of an AI Operating System becomes important.

Imagine AI That Understands What’s Happening Across the Business

Think about what can increasingly exist within the HighLevel ecosystem.

• Your contacts.
• Your leads.
• Your sales opportunities.
• Your emails and text messages.
• Your WhatsApp conversations.
• Your appointments.
• Your website enquiries.
• Your sales pipelines.
• Your workflows.
• Your customer conversations and history.

Now put AI across that information.

Suddenly AI isn’t simply generating an email or answering a question.

It can potentially understand what is happening throughout the customer journey and take action.

It can answer an enquiry.

Qualify a prospect.

Book an appointment.

Analyse a conversation.

Trigger a workflow.

Create marketing content.

Follow up a lead.

Voice AI can even answer the telephone and have a conversation with a prospective customer.

And I think we’re still at the very beginning of this.

This Is Why Neil Patel’s Choice of Words Matters

This brings us back to Neil Patel.

He didn’t describe HighLevel as one of the world’s most important CRM systems.

He described it as:

“One of the most important AI transformation platforms serving and scaling small and medium businesses today.”

I think AI transformation platform is a much more interesting description of where HighLevel is heading.

And it fits remarkably well with what I’ve been seeing myself.

HighLevel is becoming less about individual CRM features and more about providing the underlying platform through which the business operates.

That’s the basis of my AI Operating System argument.

There Are Three Trends Converging

First, scale.

Shaun Clark claims HighLevel is now second only to Salesforce in CRM size.

That begins to support my earlier prediction that HighLevel could become as ubiquitous in CRM and marketing automation as WordPress became in websites.

Second, ecosystem.

Like WordPress, HighLevel isn’t simply a piece of software.

There are agencies, consultants, developers, integrations, apps, templates and businesses being built around it.

The bigger that ecosystem becomes, the more useful the underlying platform becomes.

Third, AI.

This is potentially the most significant development of all.

AI is increasingly being woven into the platform itself.

And that means HighLevel potentially becomes more than the place where customer information is stored.

It becomes a system capable of understanding that information and acting upon it.

CRM → Ubiquitous Platform → AI Operating System

This is where I think the bigger picture becomes fascinating.

HighLevel started primarily as a marketing platform for agencies.

It developed into a substantial CRM and marketing automation platform.

I predicted that its flexibility and ecosystem could eventually make it the WordPress of CRM systems.

Shaun Clark now says HighLevel has reached a scale second only to Salesforce.

Neil Patel describes it as one of the most important AI transformation platforms serving SMEs.

And my own view, having worked with CRM and marketing automation since 2009, is that we’re seeing the next stage of that evolution.

HighLevel is becoming an AI Operating System for the business.

These aren’t three separate ideas.

I think they’re different stages of the same story.

There’s an Important Catch

None of this means that simply buying HighLevel will transform a business.

In fact, as platforms become more capable, another problem becomes increasingly important:

What should you actually do with all this technology?

Having 50 different features doesn’t necessarily make a business better.

Neither does adding AI to a badly designed process.

Someone still needs to understand how leads should enter the business, what happens to them, which processes should be automated, where humans should remain involved, where AI genuinely adds value and how the entire customer journey should work.

This is why my own work with HighLevel tends to start with the business rather than the software.

My Job Isn’t Really to Show Businesses Which Buttons to Press

As HighLevel has evolved, I’ve increasingly realised that being a HighLevel consultant isn’t primarily about knowing where every feature is located.

Of course, you need to understand the technology.

But the more important skill is being able to look at a business, understand how it operates and translate that into a system.

• What should we automate?
• Where are leads being lost?
• Where could AI help?
• What happens when somebody calls?
• What happens when somebody doesn’t buy?
• Where is staff time being wasted?
• What information should be available to AI?
• What should remain human?

Those are business questions first and HighLevel questions second.

The technology allows us to build the answer.

Perhaps My WordPress Prediction Didn’t Go Far Enough

When I originally described HighLevel as potentially becoming the WordPress of CRM systems, I was thinking primarily about scale, flexibility, customisation and ecosystem.

I still think that comparison holds.

In fact, Shaun Clark’s recent claims make it more interesting than when I originally made it.

But AI potentially takes the argument considerably further.

WordPress became the platform on which an enormous proportion of the web was built.

Could HighLevel become one of the platforms upon which a significant proportion of small and medium-sized businesses operate?

That’s a much bigger proposition.

And it helps explain why Neil Patel’s description caught my attention.

“One of the most important AI transformation platforms serving and scaling small and medium businesses today.”

We may eventually stop thinking about HighLevel as CRM software with lots of additional features.

Instead, we’ll think of it as the AI Operating System sitting at the centre of the business.

If that happens, becoming the “WordPress of CRM” may only have been the beginning.