GoHighLevel Client Offboarding & Data Export (2026)
By Dr Priya Jaganathan, GoHighLevel Certified Admin · HL Growth Partner, Australia · Updated 14 September 2026 · 8 min read
Some links below are affiliate links — if you sign up through them, HL Growth Partner may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what we recommend. Full disclosure.
Every agency documents onboarding. Almost nobody documents GoHighLevel client offboarding, and that is the process that gets you sued, reviewed badly, or stuck paying for a sub-account nobody is using.
This is the unglamorous system: what you actually hand over, what genuinely exports from a sub-account, what does not travel no matter how nicely you ask, and how to close the account out without a billing surprise or a privacy problem. I have written it for agency owners and SaaS Mode operators who need a process a team member can run without them in the room.
Quick Facts
| Sub-account deletion window | HighLevel's help documentation (2026) describes a 24-hour grace period to reverse a sub-account deletion. After that it is permanent. |
| Deleted contact recovery | Contacts and supported bulk-deleted records can be restored within 60 days from the Bulk Actions page, per HighLevel support articles (2026). |
| Who can export | Contact exports are run per sub-account by admin-level users, and the CSV arrives as an emailed download link (HighLevel docs, 2026). |
| Snapshots carry build, not data | Snapshots exclude contacts, conversations, appointments, integration credentials and LC Phone numbers (HighLevel snapshot documentation, 2026). |
| Sub-account transfer | Agency view > Sub-Accounts > Manage Client, using the receiving agency's relationship number. The receiving agency must approve (HighLevel Sub-Account Transfer Guide, 2026). |
| A2P 10DLC on transfer | LC Phone numbers and existing A2P registrations move with the sub-account when both agencies are on LC. If either side is on Twilio, that is handled at Twilio (HighLevel docs, 2026). |
| Privacy Act duty | APP 11.2 requires reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify personal information once it is no longer needed (OAIC APP Guidelines, Chapter 11). |
Why HighLevel client offboarding goes wrong more often than onboarding
Onboarding is optimistic work. You have the client's attention, a kickoff call and a snapshot ready to load.
Offboarding is the opposite. The relationship is usually cooling, the client wants their data yesterday, and you are trying to remember which integrations you connected eighteen months ago.
The single biggest cause of a messy exit is the assumption that HighLevel has a "download everything" button. It does not. Exports are feature-by-feature, run per sub-account, and several things simply have no export path at all.
The fix is the same discipline you already apply to your 7-day client onboarding checklist — a written sequence, owned by one person, with a defined finish line.
What actually exports from a GoHighLevel sub-account, and what stays behind
Before you promise a departing client anything, work out which column each asset sits in. This table reflects what HighLevel's own support documentation confirms as at September 2026.
| Asset | Travels? | How, and the catch |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts, tags, custom field values | Yes | CSV export from Contacts, admin-level only, delivered by emailed link (HighLevel docs, 2026). |
| Contact notes | Partly | HighLevel's export documentation states only the latest note is included, truncated to the first 255 characters. |
| Opportunities and pipelines | Yes | CSV export from the Opportunities list. Filter fields vary, so check the columns before you send it. |
| Form and survey submissions | Yes | Export button on the Forms and Surveys submissions page produces CSV (HighLevel docs, 2026). |
| Audit logs | Yes | HighLevel documents an audit log export. Useful evidence that you handed over and then stopped touching the account. |
| Conversation history | Not natively | There is no documented one-click conversation export. Messages are reachable through the API or a third-party export tool. |
| Conversation attachments | No clean path | In the sub-accounts I have offboarded, MMS images and file attachments do not come down as files with any standard export. |
| Workflow execution history | No | Viewable in-app only. A CSV download of workflow history remains an open feature request on HighLevel's ideas board (2026). |
| Calendars and appointments | Split | Calendar configuration travels in a snapshot; booked appointments do not. Verify appointment extraction in your own account before promising it. |
| Reviews and reputation data | No | Reviews live on the Google Business Profile, not in HighLevel. Snapshot documentation explicitly excludes reputation data. |
| LC Phone numbers | Not an export | Numbers move by sub-account transfer, an internal move tool, or a carrier port with a signed Letter of Authorisation. |
The honest sentence to put in your offboarding email
Tell the client, in writing, that HighLevel exports data feature by feature rather than as a single archive, and list exactly which files they will receive.
Never write "we will send you everything". Write "we will send you the following eight files", then name them.
Snapshot route or export route: which one your leaving client actually needs
These are two different jobs and agencies constantly conflate them.
| Snapshot route | Export route | |
|---|---|---|
| What it moves | Workflows, funnels, calendars, forms, custom fields, custom values, templates | Records: contacts, opportunities, submissions, audit logs |
| What it will not move | Contacts, conversations, appointments, integrations, phone numbers, users | Any of the build logic. A CSV cannot rebuild a workflow. |
| Destination | Another HighLevel sub-account | Anywhere: another CRM, a spreadsheet, cold storage |
| Commercial question | Do you want to hand over your IP? Often the answer is no. | Their data is their data. Hand it over without argument. |
That last row matters more than anything technical. A client is entitled to the personal information you hold on their behalf; they are not automatically entitled to the automation library you spent two years building.
Decide your snapshot policy before you sign clients, not on the day one leaves. If you want the detail on building and versioning them properly, work through our guide to creating, loading and updating snapshots first.
The third option: transferring the entire sub-account to their own agency
If the client is moving to their own HighLevel account, or to another agency, the cleanest path is usually not an export at all. It is a native sub-account transfer.
HighLevel's Sub-Account Transfer Guide documents the flow: from agency view, open Sub-Accounts, go to Manage Client, and enter the receiving agency's relationship number. The receiving agency then approves the request.
Everything goes with it — contacts, conversations, workflows, history — because the sub-account itself changes hands rather than being copied.
Two conditions to check first. The receiving party needs an actual HighLevel agency account, and per HighLevel's 2026 documentation, LC Phone numbers and existing A2P 10DLC registrations carry across when both agencies are on LC Phone.
Not on HighLevel yet? Start with a free 30-day trial here — long enough to build everything in this guide before you pay a cent.
Phone numbers, A2P 10DLC and the integrations you have to unpick
LC Phone versus Twilio
If either agency is running its own Twilio account rather than LC Phone, HighLevel does not broker the number move. You coordinate with Twilio and the previous account owner directly.
For a number the client owns and wants to keep at a different provider entirely, that is a carrier port, and HighLevel's porting documentation requires a signed Letter of Authorisation matching the service details their current carrier holds on file.
Start any port at least three weeks before the final day. Ports fail on address mismatches far more often than anyone expects, and a failed port means the client's advertised number goes dark.
The integrations nobody remembers to disconnect
- Stripe — disconnect the payment integration so no future charges route through a connection you control.
- Mailgun — if the domain was verified under your Mailgun account, sending breaks the moment you remove it. Flag this before, not after.
- Google Business Profile — revoke your agency's manager access; reviews and the profile itself never lived in HighLevel.
- Facebook, Instagram and Google Ads connections — these are authorised under a person's login, usually yours. Confirm who reauthorises them.
- Custom domains — funnel and site domains pointing at HighLevel need DNS records confirmed against whoever now owns the account.
Closing out wallet, rebilling, users and private integration tokens
This is where a clean handover turns into an awkward invoice three weeks later.
If you are running SaaS Mode, HighLevel's cancellation documentation is explicit that any non-complimentary wallet credits the client holds must be refunded through Stripe. You can tell which is which under Sub-Account Settings, Company Billing, then transaction history.
Check the wallet balance before you cancel the subscription, not after. The order matters, and it is the single most common billing mistake I see at exit. If your wallet and usage billing setup is loose, this is the moment it shows.
Then switch off rebilling for that sub-account so no further usage charges accrue against a card that is about to be cancelled. Anyone reviewing their rebilling markup and margins should treat exit as a standing step in that configuration.
Users, roles and tokens
Remove your agency team members from the sub-account, and remove any client users you created who no longer need access. Tightening user roles and permissions during offboarding protects you as much as them.
Revoke credentials as well. HighLevel's 2026 API security documentation notes that private integration tokens do not expire unless you manually revoke them, and that legacy agency or sub-account API keys unused for 90 days are deleted automatically.
A live token on a sub-account you no longer manage is an unauthorised-access incident waiting to be reported. Our walkthrough of private integrations and API access covers where these live and how to rotate them.
Pause or delete the sub-account? Why deleting is the wrong first move
| Pause | Delete | |
|---|---|---|
| Client access | Blocked, per HighLevel's pause and resume documentation | Gone |
| Reversible? | Yes, resume it any time | Only inside the documented 24-hour grace period |
| If they come back | Resume and carry on | Rebuild from scratch |
| If a dispute arises | The record still exists | You cannot evidence what you handed over |
Pause first, always. Give it a defined window — I use 30 days — then delete deliberately, once the exports are confirmed received and the privacy obligations below are satisfied.
Deleting on the final day feels decisive and is almost always regret in advance. A surprising number of clients return, which is the same retention logic behind everything in our notes on reducing SaaS Mode cancellations.
A 14-day offboarding timeline your team can run without you
- Day 1 — confirm the end date in writing, name the deliverables, and decide transfer versus export.
- Day 2 — start any carrier port or number move. This is the longest lead time in the process.
- Days 3 to 5 — run every export: contacts, opportunities, form and survey submissions, audit logs. Save them somewhere durable.
- Day 6 — decide the snapshot question and, if you are giving one, build and share it.
- Days 7 to 9 — deliver the files, get written acknowledgement of receipt, and hold the file for any disputed items.
- Day 10 — disconnect Stripe, Mailgun, Google Business Profile, ad and social connections.
- Day 11 — refund non-complimentary wallet credits, switch off rebilling, cancel the subscription in that order.
- Day 12 — remove users, revoke private integration tokens and legacy API keys.
- Day 13 — pause the sub-account and diarise the deletion date.
- Day 14 — close the loop internally: update the CRM, log the offboarding, and ask for the referral while goodwill is still warm.
Australian Privacy Act duties when you hand over, then destroy, client data
If you are an Australian agency holding personal information on behalf of clients, offboarding is a privacy event, not just an admin one.
Under APP 11 in the OAIC guidelines, an entity must take reasonable steps to protect personal information it holds, and under APP 11.2 take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify it once it is no longer needed for a permitted purpose.
That second limb is the one agencies ignore. Keeping a former client's full contact database in a CSV on your desktop indefinitely is not neutral — it is holding personal information you no longer have a purpose for.
The reform environment is also moving. The Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 received Royal Assent on 10 December 2024, and on 31 August 2026 the Government released an exposure draft of the second tranche, the Privacy Amendment (Personal Data Protection) Bill 2026.
Practically: transfer the data securely, get written confirmation of receipt, set a destruction date for your own copies, and record that you destroyed them. This is general information only and not legal advice — get advice specific to your obligations.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Promising a complete data dump before checking what HighLevel actually exports for that feature.
- Deleting the sub-account on the last day and losing the 24-hour reversal window plus all your evidence.
- Cancelling the SaaS subscription before refunding non-complimentary wallet credits.
- Leaving private integration tokens and legacy API keys live on an account you no longer manage.
- Starting a phone number port in the final week and leaving the client unreachable.
- Keeping exported CSVs of a former client's contacts forever, with no destruction date and no record of disposal.
If you want a documented offboarding process your team can run without you in the room, book a strategy call with the HL Growth Partner team.
Or if you just need the software first: grab the 30-day HighLevel trial and book us when you're ready to scale it.
Frequently asked questions
Can you export everything from a GoHighLevel sub-account in one click?
No. HighLevel exports data feature by feature rather than as a single account archive. Contacts, opportunities, form and survey submissions and audit logs each have their own CSV export, while conversation history and workflow execution history have no documented one-click export. Always confirm what a specific export contains in your own account before promising it to a client.
What does not transfer in a GoHighLevel snapshot?
Snapshot documentation from HighLevel states that snapshots exclude contacts, conversations, appointments, reputation data, integration credentials, billing, user accounts and LC Phone numbers. A snapshot moves the build, meaning workflows, funnels, calendars, forms, custom fields and custom values. It does not move the records created inside that build.
Do phone numbers transfer when you move a sub-account to another agency?
When both the releasing and receiving agencies use LC Phone, HighLevel documentation says numbers move with the sub-account and existing A2P 10DLC registrations remain valid without re-registration. If either agency uses its own Twilio account, HighLevel does not broker the move and you coordinate directly with Twilio. Moving a number to an external carrier is a port and requires a signed Letter of Authorisation.
Should I delete the sub-account as soon as the client leaves?
No. Pause it first, because pausing blocks client access while keeping the account recoverable and keeping your record of what was handed over. Set a deletion date, typically 30 days later, and only delete once exports are confirmed received and your data retention obligations are satisfied.
How long do I have to undo a deleted HighLevel sub-account?
HighLevel's help documentation describes a 24-hour grace period during which a sub-account deletion can be reversed. After that window the deletion is permanent and contacts, messages, campaigns and settings are gone. Separately, deleted contacts and supported bulk-deleted records can be restored within 60 days from the Bulk Actions page.
What happens to a SaaS client's wallet balance when they cancel?
HighLevel's cancellation documentation states that any non-complimentary wallet credits must be refunded to the client through Stripe. You can check whether credits are complimentary or non-complimentary under Sub-Account Settings, then Company Billing, then transaction history. Do this before cancelling the subscription, and switch off rebilling so no further usage charges accrue.
What does the Australian Privacy Act require when I hand over client data?
Australian Privacy Principle 11 requires an entity to take reasonable steps to protect personal information it holds from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access. APP 11.2 requires reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify that information once it is no longer needed for a permitted purpose. In practice that means transferring securely, recording receipt, and setting a destruction date for your own copies. This is general information, not legal advice.
