HighLevel vs Surefire: Which Marketing Platform Wins?

Surefire by Top of Mind Networks is the enterprise darling of mortgage marketing. Big lenders love it. Corporate marketing departments swear by it. It's got beautiful templates, compliance controls, and integrations with every major LOS.

It also costs $150+ per user per month and gives individual loan officers almost no control over their own marketing.

If you're an LO whose company uses Surefire, or if you're considering it for your own business, you need to understand what you're getting and what you're giving up. Let's compare it to HighLevel.

Understanding Surefire's Model

Surefire is designed for mortgage companies, not individual loan officers. The typical setup: corporate marketing buys Surefire, configures campaigns, creates branded templates, and rolls it out to their LO team. Individual LOs can customize minimally within guardrails set by corporate.

This is great for brand consistency and compliance. It's terrible for LOs who want to build their own brand, generate their own leads, or create marketing that differentiates them from the 50 other LOs at the same company using the same Surefire templates.

Feature Comparison

Where Surefire Wins

Content Quality and Volume

Surefire's content library is genuinely impressive. Professionally designed email templates, social media graphics, video content, print materials. All mortgage-specific, all compliance-reviewed, all regularly updated. If content creation is your biggest bottleneck, Surefire hands you a library that would take months to build yourself.

Compliance at Scale

For large lenders with hundreds of LOs, Surefire's compliance controls are critical. Corporate can lock down messaging, ensure disclosures are included, and prevent individual LOs from sending non-compliant communications. This is a genuine regulatory need for enterprise operations.

Video Marketing

Surefire has solid video email capabilities built in. You can record and embed video directly in marketing emails, which drives higher engagement. It's a nice feature that HighLevel handles through integrations rather than natively.

LOS Integration Depth

Surefire integrates deeply with Encompass, Empower, and other major loan origination systems. Milestone-triggered marketing, loan status updates, and pipeline-based campaigns work automatically based on LOS data.

Where HighLevel Wins

Individual LO Control

This is the fundamental tension. Surefire is designed for corporate control. HighLevel is designed for individual empowerment. If you want to build your own brand, create custom campaigns, and own your marketing strategy, HighLevel is the clear choice.

With Surefire, you're marketing within someone else's system. With HighLevel, you're building your own.

Lead Generation

Surefire is primarily a marketing automation and nurture platform. It's excellent at staying in touch with your existing database. But it offers limited tools for generating new leads through funnels, paid ads, and landing pages.

HighLevel is a lead generation machine. Build landing pages, run Facebook and Google ad campaigns, capture leads, qualify with AI, and nurture through closing. The full lifecycle, not just the middle part.

Price for Individual LOs

Surefire's pricing is enterprise-oriented, typically $150+ per user per month through company contracts. Some companies absorb this cost for their LOs. Others pass it along. Either way, it's expensive compared to HighLevel's $97/mo for far more functionality.

If you're paying for Surefire yourself, the math doesn't work. You're paying more for less capability.

Automation Flexibility

Surefire's automated journeys are pre-configured by corporate marketing teams. Individual LOs have limited ability to create custom workflows. HighLevel gives you full control over your automation: custom triggers, conditional logic, multi-channel sequences, and AI-powered responses. The flexibility gap is significant.

SMS and Multi-Channel Communication

Surefire is primarily email-focused. HighLevel includes SMS, email, phone, webchat, social media DMs, and AI chatbot all in one platform. In 2026, multi-channel communication isn't optional. Borrowers expect to reach you (and be reached) on their preferred channel.

The "Corporate vs. Independent" Decision

Here's the honest framework for this comparison:

If your company provides Surefire at no cost to you and you're happy with corporate-managed marketing, use it. Free tools that work adequately are hard to argue against. But consider running HighLevel alongside it for your own lead generation and personal brand building.

If you're paying for Surefire yourself or if your company doesn't provide it, HighLevel is the obvious choice. More features, more control, lower cost. It's not a close comparison for individual LOs paying their own way.

If you're a broker or branch manager choosing a platform for your team, the calculation is different. Surefire offers compliance controls and managed content that reduce risk. HighLevel offers more power per dollar but requires more oversight. The right answer depends on your team's marketing sophistication and your compliance requirements.

Running Both (The Hybrid Approach)

Many LOs in our community run HighLevel alongside their company-provided Surefire account. Surefire handles the baseline corporate marketing (compliance-approved emails, branded content). HighLevel handles lead generation, personal brand building, custom automations, and the stuff Surefire can't do.

This isn't double the work. It's division of labor. Let corporate handle the corporate stuff. You focus on what actually grows your pipeline.

Who Should Choose Surefire?

• Large lenders needing enterprise compliance controls across hundreds of LOs
• Companies that want corporate-managed marketing with minimal LO involvement
• LOs whose company provides and pays for Surefire (use it, it's free to you)
• Operations where content creation bandwidth is zero and pre-built content is essential

Who Should Choose HighLevel?

• Independent LOs and small teams paying for their own marketing tools
• LOs who want to generate their own leads, not just nurture existing ones
• Anyone building a personal brand alongside (or separate from) their company brand
• LOs who want full control over their marketing strategy and execution
• Brokers who want powerful marketing tools without enterprise pricing

The Verdict

Surefire is an excellent enterprise marketing platform for large mortgage companies that need managed content, compliance controls, and LOS integration at scale. It does what it does well.

But for individual loan officers, it's overpriced and underdelivers on the capabilities that actually drive business growth: lead generation, custom automation, multi-channel communication, and AI. HighLevel covers all of these at a fraction of the cost while giving you complete control over your marketing.

If you want your company to market for you, Surefire works. If you want to market for yourself, HighLevel wins. And the LOs who market for themselves consistently outperform those who don't.