🚨 URGENT ISSUE: GHL’s Lack of Email Throttling is Breaking Deliverability for Users with Custom SMTP (e.g., Bluehost)
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Shiva J
m posting this publicly because private tickets have gone nowhere, and this issue affects more than just me—it affects every GHL user who uses a custom SMTP provider like Bluehost, and potentially others.
Despite repeated back-and-forth with support, Go High Level is refusing to take responsibility for a critical flaw in their email system: there is no built-in throttling feature.
For those unfamiliar: Email throttling is a basic and essential function in any CRM platform that sends email. It controls the rate at which emails are sent to avoid overwhelming SMTP servers, triggering spam filters, or getting accounts blocked. Without throttling, emails are blasted out all at once, and servers like Bluehost reject them to protect against spam-like behavior. That’s exactly what’s happening here.
I’ve personally spoken with Bluehost support several times. They’ve made it abundantly clear that this is not a problem on their end. In fact, they’ve told me they’ve had multiple calls with other Go High Level users experiencing the exact same issue. Their assessment? GHL’s software is not pacing email sends—and that's the root of the problem.
Yet, GHL support keeps pointing to error codes that say “email rejected by host” and trying to pass the blame, rather than addressing the actual cause of the rejection: the system is sending too many emails too fast, with no throttle control.
This isn’t a fringe request or a luxury feature. It’s foundational CRM infrastructure. Any platform offering email automation and marketing tools should already have a throttle system in place. That GHL doesn’t is not only baffling—it’s negligent.
đź“Ł To the GHL tech team and leadership:
It’s time to stop deflecting and start fixing. You’ve built a powerful platform, but you’re leaving your users exposed with a fundamental oversight that threatens our businesses. If this doesn’t get resolved, many of us will be forced to seek alternatives.
This issue needs to be escalated and addressed immediately.
If you're a GHL user experiencing random email bounces or rejections using custom SMTP—check your logs. You’re probably affected too. Let’s make some noise until this gets prioritized.
– Shiva J
Transformational Empowerment Coach
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Shaun Clark
What's the ticket number here?
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Shiva J
Shaun Clark I don't know what you mean by this?
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Shaun Clark
Shiva J You said you've worked with support, is there a ticket that details this so I can get it to the product manager?
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Shiva J
Shaun Clark by the time I posted this, there had been several messages with support but I did find one.
Ticket ID 3514724
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Angela Sutton
Shaun Clark Do let me know if you need a ticket for this.
GHL already has the engine to do this ... Needs to automatically default to do it no matter where the email is triggered from - Lists (you can manually do it from there), Automations (you can't)
It's just that ideally it should "just throttle for you" to solve the PROBLEM of email deliverability
I want for any number of people coming into an automation, or in a campaign, that they are automatically throttled.
For sure, also have overrides as you do in the Campaigns area where I can say, send to a group of 50 spaced 30 minutes apart
Hope that makes sense.
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Shiva J
Angela Sutton makes sense to me! As users, it isn't our responsibility to set up any sort of workflow that that throttles and I hope that support figures this out super quick as they are losing money by the day for not having this resolved.
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Angela Sutton
This would solve a big problem I have in which throttling is not available for automations. I would like throttling to occur period - since there is no point in sending out emails if, after all your hard effort, setting up custom domains and fields and verifying the domain, the email still ends up in spam
Anecdotally, most people I talk to that love HighLevel warn that GHL has email deliverability problems.
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Shiva J
Angela Sutton sadly, I find a lot of online chatter talking about how great GHL is save for this one major flaw. Many have left GHL because of this, and I am about to take myself and all of my affiliates off the platform as well, because this problem isn't small. Its the job of a CRM to make sure emails are delivered.
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Shannon Carter
Shaun Clark
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Brian Del Terzo
Would this type of functionality help resolve the issue?
I was originally thinking about it just for the warmup phase, but it seems like it might apply here too:
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Angela Sutton
Brian Del Terzo Yes - super awesome to do this too. Thanks for this! The throttling would also be massive in terms of email deliverability.
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Shiva J
Brian Del Terzo the whole idea of needing to "warm up" a domain is complete and total rubbish. I don't need to warm up anything at all when I use platforms like Constant Contact, Aweber, Mail Chimp, ect...why? Because all of those use a throttling system. We as users should NOT need to be looking for a work around...GHL just needs to fix the issue. End of story.
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Shiva J
Angela Sutton as I mentioned in other comments, we should not NEED to do this. Throttling software should already be installed by GHL and then it would just work!