Key Takeaways
- The create modal has five fields. Four of them control distribution, and one of those can never be changed afterward.
- Target user, sub account or agency, is the permanent one. Choose it before you click create.
- Private apps are capped at five agencies. Pass security review and that cap goes away while the app stays private.
- Who can install decides whether sub account admins can find your app themselves or whether the agency has to push it down.
- White label listing lets agencies rebrand your app as their own feature, which is why it is the recommended default.
HighLevel published a short walkthrough on setting up a marketplace app, and it is more useful than the runtime suggests. Five fields decide who ever sees your app, and one of them is permanent. If you build on the platform as a GHL consultant Bay Area businesses rely on, this is a screen worth understanding before you touch it. On Point Tech Solutions builds custom tooling on top of HighLevel out of Los Gatos, so we live on it.
The Scenario
The walkthrough uses one example throughout. You have built a review management app. You want agencies to install it across their client accounts, and you also want sub account admins to find it and install it themselves. Every setting gets chosen against that goal, which makes the tradeoffs easy to follow. Inside your developer account, go to the top right, click new app, and the create modal opens with everything you need to decide.
Setting One: App Name
What appears in the marketplace listing. Clear and descriptive beats clever. The demo calls it review app and moves on.
Setting Two: Private or Public
Private means only agencies you share it with can install it, and it is capped at five agencies total. A sixth one tries and gets blocked. To go past five you either flip it to public or you go through HighLevel's security review. Pass that review and the app can stay private with no install cap.
Public means anyone in the marketplace can find and install it. For an app built for broad distribution, that is the answer.
Read it this way: private is a stage, not a strategy. Five agencies is enough to pilot with and not enough to build a business on, and the security review is the gate between the two.
Setting Three: Target User, and This One Is Permanent
Two choices: sub account or agency. This is the field that cannot be changed after you click create.
Sub account is for anything that lives inside a client account: lead tools, review tools, booking and communication apps, the things your clients touch day to day. HighLevel marks it recommended, and the video says it fits the vast majority of apps and gives you the most reach.
Agency is for tools that only make sense at the agency level. Managing multiple locations, snapshot utilities, agency reporting. These are only visible in the agency marketplace. Sub accounts cannot see them or install them.
Get this wrong and there is no settings page that fixes it. You rebuild the app.
Setting Four: Who Can Install
Everyone means both agency admins and sub account admins can find and install the app. Sub account users see it in their own marketplace view and install it directly, without the agency doing it for them. That is maximum reach.
Agency only means the agency controls every install. Sub account users cannot see it or install it themselves. Use that when you are building something meant to be pushed down to clients as a white labeled feature the agency controls.
Setting Five: Listing Type
White label, which HighLevel marks as recommended, lets agencies rebrand your app under their own label when they push it to sub accounts. Non white label shows it with your branding as is.
The video argues for white label on business grounds, not technical ones. Agencies sell the system as theirs, and an app they can put their name on is an app they will actually distribute. Worth knowing alongside it: the marketplace shows agency owners one unified catalog rather than splitting agency and sub account marketplaces, and sub account users only see what their agency has approved for them.
Why This Matters for Bay Area and San Jose Businesses
Most South Bay businesses will never build a marketplace app. They will install one, and this is the screen that decides whether they can. If you run a clinic in San Jose or a trades business in Campbell and your agency tells you a tool is not available to you, this is usually why. Either the app was published with agency as the target user, or the agency chose agency only installs. Neither is a limit on your account. It is a choice somebody made in a modal.
That matters when you are picking who builds your systems. An agency that publishes agency only, non white label apps is an agency that keeps the leverage. An agency that hands you sub account access to the tools running your business is one you can leave without losing them. That is the same reason our clients own what we build for them, rather than renting it back from us.
Practical Steps
- Decide target user first, on paper, before you open the create modal. It is the one you cannot undo.
- Ask where the app runs. If a client uses it, it is sub account, not agency.
- Start private if you are piloting, but plan for the five agency cap from day one.
- Budget time for the security review if you want an uncapped private app. It is the only route.
- Choose everyone for who can install unless you have a real reason to keep sub accounts out.
- Default to white label listing. It makes agencies far more willing to distribute you.
- Reread every field before clicking create. All but one are editable later.
Watch the Walkthrough
Final Thoughts
A four minute setup screen with one irreversible field on it is the kind of thing nobody reads about until they have already done it wrong. Write down what the app does and who touches it, and the answers fall out of that.
On Point Tech Solutions is a Go High Level consultant in Los Gatos serving San Jose and the Bay Area. We build websites, funnels, automations and custom systems on HighLevel, and our clients own what we build. Done for you, or taught to your team with an SOP so you are never locked in. See what we build at optechsol.llc.