Leave GoHighLevel in this order: export what it lets you export, write down what it does not, rebuild and test the new setup, move your phone numbers and email DNS, then cut over on a set date and keep the old account unused for a while. The mistake to avoid is cancelling first. HighLevel’s own help page says that on cancellation you lose access to contacts, conversations, calendars and funnels, your workflows stop, and phone numbers and registrations are deleted after 14 days.
We moved our own sales pipeline off GoHighLevel this month, into a system we built ourselves. What follows is a checklist for leaving without losing anything.
Who GoHighLevel suits, and why firms leave
GoHighLevel is a sound choice for a business where one team runs marketing, sales and delivery and wants flat-rate pricing with automation built in. Our comparison with HubSpot covers who it suits and who it does not.
Firms leave for ordinary reasons. The pipeline needs to connect to quotes, jobs or invoices that live in other systems. The data model is flatter than they want, for example for selling to accounts with several contacts. Or the person who built the setup has moved on and nobody is sure what it does. If it works and the team uses it, do not move. A migration costs more effort than it looks like on paper.
Before you touch anything
- Confirm you have admin access. HighLevel’s contact export guide says only admin users can export contacts. If an agency built your account, get yourself admin or ask them for the exports now.
- List every location (sub-account). The same guide says contacts must be exported separately for each one.
- Do not cancel anything yet. The cancellation page says that after 90 days a cancelled account is permanently deleted and cannot be restored, and phone numbers and registrations go after 14. Treat cancellation as the last step.
1. Export contacts, opportunities, notes and conversations
What comes out, and what does not, according to HighLevel’s help pages at the time of writing:
- Contacts. A CSV with names, emails, phone numbers, tags and custom fields if selected. It contains only the columns visible in the Contacts table, so add the ones you need first. A completed export stays in Bulk Actions for 30 days, so download it and store it yourself.
- Not in the contact export: automation history, such as past emails and SMS logs. Only the latest note, up to 255 characters, is included.
- Opportunities. There is an Export Opportunities option on the Opportunities page. HighLevel describes the file as containing opportunity, pipeline and stage data, without listing the columns. Export a sample and check that value, owner, the linked contact, custom fields and lost reasons are all there.
- Notes. For sales teams, notes are often the most valuable part of a record. HighLevel’s developer documentation lists a Get All Notes call for a contact, so a developer can script a full extract. Test it on a sample first.
- Conversations. We found no native export in HighLevel’s help pages, and a request on its ideas board for one was posted in 2019, and we could see no official reply on it. Third-party apps say they fill the gap. If you use one, remember you are handing your customers’ messages to another company, so check what it does with them. Decide first whether you need full message history, or just the last contact date and the notes.
- Everything else. HighLevel’s cancellation page also lists calendars, automations, financial records, products, memberships and courses, and funnels and websites among the things to export first. Go through your account menu by menu.
Keep the consent trail. The ICO says you must be able to show that consent was given: who, when, what they were told and how. Make sure source, date and form wording survive the move, along with every unsubscribe and do-not-contact flag, or you will not be able to prove it later.
Cleaning the data before you import it matters as much as the export. Dirty migration is one of the five causes in our guide to why CRM implementations fail.
2. List and rebuild the workflows
We found no way to export a workflow as a file and take it to another platform. HighLevel’s snapshots overview describes copying workflows, forms, calendars, pipelines, tags and custom fields between HighLevel accounts. It says contacts, conversations and integrations do not transfer. That helps you move within HighLevel, not out of it.
So document them by hand. For each workflow, record the name, the trigger, the conditions, every action and wait step, who is notified, and whether it is switched on. A simple table does it:
| Workflow | Trigger | What it does | Active? | Rebuild? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New enquiry | Form submitted | Instant reply, task for an owner, reminder if not answered | Yes | Yes, first |
| Missed call | Call not answered | Text back, create task | Yes | Yes |
| Old webinar follow-up | Tag added | A run of follow-up emails | No | No |
Mark the dead ones and do not rebuild them. Rebuild the live ones in the order they bring in or protect money. Lead follow-up usually comes first, and answering every enquiry the same day covers how to build it well.
3. Forms, embeds, calendars and chat widgets
HighLevel gives each form its own embed code, calendars have their own embed code, and the chat widget is a script pasted into your site. Each one is a place where enquiries still flow into HighLevel after you think you have left.
Hunt for them in these places:
- Every page on your website, including old landing pages and the footer.
- Booking links in email signatures and automated emails.
- QR codes and links on brochures, vans and quotes.
- Funnels and pages hosted in HighLevel on your own domain, which need rebuilding or moving, with redirects for the old addresses.
Then switch them one at a time and submit a test through each.
4. Phone numbers, voice and SMS
Numbers are the part that is hardest to undo.
- Porting. HighLevel’s moving numbers guide covers moving a number to your own Twilio account and to another HighLevel agency. It does not describe porting out to an outside carrier, so ask HighLevel support and your new provider how to do it before you start. The same guide warns against deleting, releasing or cancelling a number with its current provider before a transfer is confirmed.
- The 14 day rule. Because numbers are deleted 14 days after cancellation, they must be moved before you cancel.
- SMS. HighLevel’s UK guidance describes a UK long code connected to an approved regulatory compliance bundle, an alphanumeric sender ID for one-way branded messages, or a short code. Whichever you use, expect to set up the equivalent with the new provider, and check lead times before the cut-over.
- Voice. Call forwarding, voicemail greetings, call-tracking numbers in ads and the number printed on your vans all need updating.
5. Email sending domains and DNS
If you send email from your own domain through HighLevel, you added DNS records to authenticate it. HighLevel’s dedicated sending domain guide names MX, SPF and DKIM records and recommends a subdomain used for nothing else. The new platform needs its own set.
The order that avoids trouble:
- Add the new platform’s records, and send a test.
- Move sending over.
- Remove HighLevel’s records only once nothing sends through it.
A domain can have only one SPF record, HighLevel’s own authentication guide says so, so combine the new sender into the existing record instead of adding a second. Check that mail from the new setup passes SPF and DKIM before you send to your whole list, and ramp volume up gradually, because a new sending setup has no track record with mailbox providers.
6. Tracking and attribution
This is easy to overlook, and it is the history that tells you which channel brings customers.
- Find where source and campaign live on each contact and export them with everything else.
- Find every ad platform or analytics tool that HighLevel sends conversions or events to.
- Find the HighLevel tracking code on your site, and plan to replace it.
- Submit a test enquiry from each form with campaign parameters attached, and confirm that source arrives intact in the new system.
7. The cut-over, and the quiet period
- Choose a date, and tell the team what changes.
- Freeze: no new workflows or edits in HighLevel.
- Take a final export.
- On the day, switch forms, booking links and DNS, then turn off HighLevel’s workflows and sending.
- Keep the old account running but unused. Do not rely on cancellation as a read-only mode, because access ends with it. Agree that nobody writes to it.
- Wait through at least one month end, and compare counts of contacts and open deals between the old and new systems.
- Take one last export, port or release the numbers, then cancel, knowing the deletion clocks above start from that day.
If a rebuild is part of this, whether in another off-the-shelf CRM or a system built around your own quotes and jobs, that is what our CRM and automation work covers. If you want a second pair of eyes on your inventory before you commit, book a 30 minute call. We will tell you honestly if staying put is the better choice.