The first time you log in to GoHighLevel, the screen can feel busy. Menus on the left. Cards in the middle. Buttons everywhere. Take a breath — this guide walks through the whole screen, one piece at a time, in plain English.

Best way to use this guide: open your own GoHighLevel account in a second browser tab. Read one section here, then look at the same spot in your account. Seeing it on your own screen makes it stick.

The big picture: three zones

Every screen in GoHighLevel has the same three zones:

  1. The left sidebar (your main menu)

    The dark column on the left edge of the screen. Every feature lives here. If you are ever lost, come back to this sidebar.

  2. The top bar (search and account)

    The thin strip across the top. It holds the search box and, in the top-right corner, your profile picture and settings.

  3. The main area (where the work happens)

    Everything else. This big middle space changes depending on which sidebar item you clicked.

app.gohighlevel.com/dashboard
Dashboard
Conversations
Calendars
Contacts
Opportunities
Payments
Automation
Sites
Original illustration of the dashboard layout. Hover the numbered dots.

What each sidebar item does

Here is the plain-English translation of the menu, top to bottom. (Names can vary slightly by account, and admins can reorder them — so read the labels, not just the positions.)

Dashboard. Your home screen. Shows your key numbers: new leads, booked appointments, and revenue.

Conversations. One inbox for everything. Texts, emails, Facebook and Instagram messages, and Google chat messages all land here, so you never hunt across five apps.

Calendars. Your booking system. Clients pick a time on your booking page, and it appears here.

Contacts. Your address book, also called a CRM. Every person who calls, texts, or fills out a form gets saved here.

Opportunities. Your sales tracker. Picture a whiteboard with columns like “New Lead”, “Quoted”, and “Won”. You drag people between columns as deals move forward. Each column is called a stage.

Payments. Send invoices, take card payments, and see who has paid.

Marketing. Send email or text campaigns to many contacts at once, and schedule social media posts.

Automation. The robot helper. You build workflows — automatic follow-ups that run even while you sleep.

Sites. Build websites, landing pages, forms, and surveys with drag-and-drop tools.

Reputation. Ask customers for Google reviews by text and reply to reviews from one screen.

Reporting. Charts that answer one question: “is what I am doing working?”

Settings. Always at the bottom of the sidebar. Your business info, team members, and phone number setup live here.

Don’t try to learn everything at once. Most new users only need Dashboard, Contacts, Conversations, and Calendars in week one. The rest can wait. Seriously.

Try this 2-minute exercise

  1. Click “Contacts” in the left sidebar

    The main area changes to show a (probably empty) list of people.

  2. Click “Dashboard” again

    You are back home. That is the whole trick to navigating: sidebar click, look at the main area, sidebar click again.

  3. Find your profile picture in the top-right corner

    Click it once to see your account menu, then click anywhere else to close it. Now nothing on this screen is a mystery.

Reading without an account?

This tour makes ten times more sense when you can click along on your own screen.

30-Day Free Trial + $15,000 Bonuses

Affiliate link — we earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you.