GHL Changelog · July 1, 2026
GoHighLevel Just Built a Free Apollo/Hunter Replacement Into Its Prospecting Tool
On July 1, 2026, GoHighLevel released a new update. It’s for a tool called the Prospecting Tool, which agencies use to find new customers. The update makes GoHighLevel automatically find a business’s phone number and email address for you. It can even find the name of the actual owner or manager, not just a general company phone line. If you’re deciding whether to sign up for GoHighLevel, this matters because it replaces a job that used to require paying for a second, separate tool.
New to GoHighLevel? Here’s what it is
GoHighLevel (people often just call it “GHL” or “HighLevel”) is one piece of software that does the job of several separate tools. It includes a CRM, which is just a place to store and organize all your customers and leads, plus tools for sending texts and emails, a website and sales-page builder, an appointment booking calendar, and tools for finding new customers. Instead of paying for five different apps, you pay for GoHighLevel once. Plans start at $97 a month. Many marketing agencies also use GoHighLevel to build their own branded version of the software and resell it to their own clients. Want the full breakdown of what GoHighLevel costs? Read our GHL AI Pricing Teardown. This article is about one specific update, and what it means for you if you’re trying to decide whether GoHighLevel is worth signing up for.
- GoHighLevel can now visit a business’s own website and pull out the phone number and email address automatically, right when you save that business as a lead. Before, it could only pull info from the business’s Google listing, which is often just a front-desk number.
- There’s a new switch you can turn on that also finds the name of the owner or manager — a real person, not just “the business.” Each person it finds gets saved as its own contact.
- It used to create messy, duplicate contact entries. Now it doesn’t — one business gets one clean contact card, even if it finds several emails or phone numbers.
- This is already included if you’re on GoHighLevel’s $97-a-month Starter plan or higher. You don’t pay extra for it. A separate tool that does something similar, like Apollo or Hunter, usually costs an extra $49 to $150+ a month on top of whatever CRM you already use.
- It won’t replace those tools completely for every use case — more on that below.
1. What actually changed
Before this update, GoHighLevel’s Prospecting Tool only pulled basic information from a business’s Google listing: name, address, and a phone number. That phone number is often just the front desk, not a way to reach the actual decision-maker, and there’s usually no email address at all.
It now reads the business’s own website
When you save a new lead inside GoHighLevel, it now scans that business’s website and pulls out any phone numbers or email addresses it finds there, and adds them to the contact. Right now this works for individual client accounts inside an agency, which GoHighLevel calls “sub-accounts.” GoHighLevel says a version for agencies themselves is coming soon.
It can find the actual decision-maker
There’s a toggle you can switch on called “POC discovery.” POC just stands for “Point of Contact” — a term for a specific person, like an owner or manager. Turn it on, and GoHighLevel tries to find that person’s name and contact info too, saving them as their own contact linked to the business. Turn it off, and you just get the basic business contact, faster.
It stopped creating duplicate contacts
In the past, if GoHighLevel found two different phone numbers for the same business, it might create two separate, duplicate contact entries. Now, one business gets one clean contact card, with the extra phone numbers and emails attached to it instead of spread across duplicates.
This doesn’t change GoHighLevel’s separate Marketing Audit Report limits (free accounts get 5 detailed reports a month; paid accounts get unlimited). That’s a different feature — this update is only about finding contact info.
2. Why this matters if you’re not on GoHighLevel yet
If you run an agency and your process looks like this — find a lead in one tool, then pay a second tool to look up the owner’s real phone number and email before you reach out — this update saves you from needing that second tool.
Here’s what tools like that normally cost on their own, separate from whatever CRM you’re already paying for:
| Tool | What it costs to start | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Apollo.io Basic | $49 per user, per month (paid yearly) | 900 “credits” a year. A full contact lookup uses about 9 credits, so that’s roughly 100 lookups for the whole year. |
| Apollo.io Professional | $79 per user, per month (paid yearly) | Says “unlimited” lookups, but there are limits. Teams that use it a lot often end up paying $150 to $400 per person, per month once it’s all added up. |
| Hunter.io Starter | $49 a month ($34 if paid yearly) | 2,000 credits. Only finds email addresses, no phone numbers. |
| Hunter.io Growth | $149 a month ($104 if paid yearly) | 10,000 credits, plus AI search features. |
These numbers come from independent reviews of Apollo’s and Hunter’s pricing (Saleshandy and Cleanlist), not from Apollo or Hunter themselves.
Add one of those tools on top of a $97-a-month GoHighLevel Starter plan, and you’re really paying somewhere around $150 to $250+ a month total. GoHighLevel’s update gives you a version of that same lookup feature already built in, with no second subscription and no extra credits to track. It’s the same pattern we’ve already covered in our GHL vs CloseBot comparison: GoHighLevel keeps building features in-house that used to require adding a separate app.
3. Where this does NOT solve everything
Be honest about the limits
- It only knows what’s on one website. Apollo and Hunter have huge databases of contacts built over years. GoHighLevel’s tool only looks at the one business website you’re viewing — it can’t search a giant outside database the way Apollo or Hunter can.
- It doesn’t check if an email actually works. Hunter checks whether an email address is real before you send anything to it, so you don’t waste time on addresses that bounce back. GoHighLevel doesn’t have that yet.
- It’s built for local businesses, not big companies nationwide. GoHighLevel’s Prospecting Tool is made for agencies that find local businesses nearby to pitch marketing services to. If you need contacts at larger companies across the country, this isn’t built for that.
- It’s not available for every account type yet. Right now this only works for individual client accounts inside an agency. A version for agencies themselves is “coming next,” according to GoHighLevel.
4. Does this change anything about picking a CRM?
No, and that’s worth saying clearly. This update only affects the Prospecting Tool, which is about finding new leads. It doesn’t change how GoHighLevel stores or organizes the customers and deals you already have. If you were comparing GoHighLevel to Attio, another CRM, to decide which one to build your business on, this update doesn’t change that comparison at all. But if you were comparing “GoHighLevel plus a separate tool like Apollo” against a competitor that already includes something like this, this update matters a lot.
See what it finds when you search your own list of businesses.
FAQ
What is GoHighLevel?
GoHighLevel, also called GHL or HighLevel, is software built for marketing agencies. It combines a CRM (a tool for tracking customers and leads), text and email marketing, website and funnel building, appointment booking, and lead-finding tools into one product. Plans start at $97 a month. Agencies also use it to build and sell their own branded version of the software to their own clients.
When did this update come out?
July 1, 2026. It’s listed on GoHighLevel’s own official changelog, a public page where the company posts updates, under the title “Prospecting: Smarter CRM contact creation and contact enrichment.”
Do I have to pay extra for this?
No. It’s part of the Prospecting Tool, which is already included starting with GoHighLevel’s $97-a-month Starter plan. There’s no extra charge mentioned for this specific feature.
Does this mean I don’t need Apollo or Hunter anymore?
Not completely. It replaces the most common need, which is finding a local business owner’s phone number and email from their own website. It doesn’t replace Apollo’s or Hunter’s much bigger databases, their email-checking tools, or searches for contacts at large companies nationwide.
What is POC discovery?
POC stands for Point of Contact, which just means a specific person, like a business owner or manager. It’s a switch you can turn on that tells GoHighLevel to also look for that person’s name and contact info, not just the general business listing. You can turn it off to move faster and skip that step.
Does this fix duplicate contacts?
Yes. Before, GoHighLevel could create more than one contact card for the same business if it found multiple phone numbers or emails. Now it combines that information into one contact card instead.
Can agencies use this too, or just their individual clients?
Right now it only works for individual client accounts inside an agency, which GoHighLevel calls sub-accounts. GoHighLevel says a version for the agency level is coming soon.
