How to Export Email Conversations From GoHighLevel

Sooner or later a client asks for a copy of their email history. It might be for a compliance request, a migration, an audit, or a dispute over who said what. GoHighLevel stores those emails inside conversations, but getting them out in bulk takes more work than it should.

This guide covers what you can do natively, how the API export works, and where each approach starts to hurt.

What "email conversations" means in GoHighLevel

In GoHighLevel, every contact can have a conversation that holds all their messages in one thread: SMS, email, calls, chat and more. Each email in that thread is a message with a sender, a subject, a body, a direction (inbound or outbound) and a timestamp.

So "export email conversations" really means "export every email message in a sub-account, or for a set of contacts, over a date range." Keep that definition in mind. It decides which method fits.

Option 1: Copy a single thread by hand

For one or two contacts, the inbox is fine.

1. Open the sub-account and go to Conversations.
2. Search for the contact and open their thread.
3. Find the emails you need and copy the text into a document, or take screenshots.

This works for a single dispute or a quick check. It breaks down fast. You lose structure, you can miss messages in a long thread, and it can't cover a whole sub-account.

As of October 2026, we couldn't find a native button in the Conversations inbox that exports email threads in bulk. Menus change, so check your own account before you rule it out.

Option 2: The contact export (and why it isn't enough)

Many people try the contact export from the Contacts list first. It gives you contact records and fields, not message history. If you're relying on it for a client handoff, read what the GoHighLevel CSV export leaves out before you promise anything.

Option 3: Use the Conversations API

The reliable native route is HighLevel's API. There is an endpoint documented as export messages for a specific location with cursor-based pagination support. Here is the practical way to use it.

What you need

• A way to authenticate. For one sub-account, that's a Private Integration Token. Our Private Integration Token guide walks through creating one. For many sub-accounts, you'd build a marketplace app.
• The sub-account's location ID. It's required by the endpoint.
• Somewhere to run requests and store the output, such as a script, Postman or a no-code automation tool.

Steps

1. Create your token and give it access to conversations and messages. Scope names can change, so check the current options in the developer docs.
2. Copy the location ID for the sub-account you're exporting.
3. Call the export-messages endpoint with the location ID and set channel=Email.
4. Read the nextCursor value in each response and send it back to get the next page. The cursor is empty when there are no more results.
5. Write each page to a file as you go. Convert the JSON to CSV if your client wants a spreadsheet.

Gotchas that catch people

• Email is opt-in. When channel is omitted, it returns all non-email message types. If you forget the channel, you'll get SMS and activity messages and no emails, which looks like an empty email history.
• Cursors expire. Cursor validity is 2 minutes from the last request made. If your script stalls or crashes, you may have to restart that run, so save progress often.
• Rate limits apply. A large sub-account means many pages. Respect the API rate limit and back off when you get throttled.
• Totals help you check your work. The response includes the total number of messages matching the query, so compare it with the rows you saved.

A per-conversation alternative

If you only need certain contacts, you can work conversation by conversation instead.

1. Use the search-conversations endpoint to find conversations. It has a lastMessageType filter, but that filters on the last message only. A thread whose latest message is an SMS can still hold emails, so don't use that filter alone to find "email conversations."
2. For each conversation ID, call the get-messages endpoint. It returns 20 messages by default, so set a higher limit or page through. You can pass a type filter that includes TYPE_EMAIL.

This suits a short list of contacts. For a whole sub-account it means thousands of calls, so the location-level export is usually the better path.

Where the native way gets slow

The API route works, but you pay for it in time and upkeep.

None of this is hard for a developer. It's just work that doesn't scale for an agency whose account manager gets a "send me my emails" request on a Friday afternoon.

If you also need calls or texts, the same problems apply. We cover those in exporting call recordings and exporting SMS conversations.

Before you export: a short checklist

1. Confirm who is allowed to receive the data. Email history can include personal information.
2. Decide the date range up front, so you export what was asked for and no more.
3. Export per sub-account and label the files with the sub-account name and date.
4. Spot-check a few threads against what you see in the inbox.
5. If this is part of an offboarding, pair it with a full sub-account backup.

How RGS Tools handles it

If you'd rather not maintain a script, the Conversation Exporter from RGS Tools does this job for you. It covers SMS and email export, lets you pull any date range with no row caps, and runs background exports so you don't have to keep a tab open.

It connects through one marketplace-app install for the whole agency, or through a Private Integration Token for a single sub-account. Pricing is per agency, with unlimited sub-accounts, a 7-day free trial and cancel any time. It's $67/mo on its own, or part of the $149/mo All Tools Bundle. You can start at export.revenuegeneratingsolutions.com.

RGS Tools is made by Revenue Generating Solutions, a white-label GoHighLevel agency that built these tools for its own sub-accounts first. It isn't affiliated with HighLevel Inc.