How to Add Your First Contact in GoHighLevel
A contact is one person saved in your account — a lead, a customer, or even yourself for testing. In this guide you will add one by hand, fill in the fields that matter, and give it a tag. Five minutes, start to finish.
Good idea for your first try: add yourself as the first contact. Use your real phone and email. Later, when you test texts and emails, they will arrive on your own phone — the safest way to practice.
The steps
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Open Contacts
Look at the dark sidebar on the left edge of your screen. Click Contacts. The main area now shows a list — probably empty, which is fine.
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Click the add-contact button in the top-right corner
Look at the top-right area of the contact list. You will see a small round or square button with a plus symbol (+) (on some screens it says “Add Contact”). Click it. A form slides open.
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Fill in the basics
Only three fields truly matter today:
- First name and last name — so you can find the person later.
- Phone — needed for texting. Include the country code if asked (for the US, that is +1).
- Email — needed for emailing.
Skip everything else for now. Empty fields are allowed.
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Click Save
Find the Save button (usually at the bottom or top-right of the form) and click it. The person now appears in your contact list. That’s it — you have a CRM with one contact in it.
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Add a tag
Click the contact’s name in the list to open their profile. Find the Tags box (usually in the left column of the profile). Type a short word like test or new-lead and press Enter.
A tag is just a label. Tags let you filter people later (“show me everyone tagged new-lead”) and are how automations decide who gets which message.
Success check: go back to the contact list and type the person’s name in the search box at the top. If they appear, everything saved correctly.
Common questions
“Do I have to add every contact by hand?” No. This is just the way to learn. Real contacts usually arrive automatically — from forms, calls, or a spreadsheet import. We will cover imports in the Contacts & CRM section.
“I made a typo. Can I edit a contact?” Yes. Click the contact’s name, click into any field on their profile, fix it, and it saves automatically.
“Can I delete a test contact?” Yes. Tick the checkbox next to their name in the list, then look for the trash icon that appears above the list.
Want to practice on a real account?
You just learned the single most-used screen in GoHighLevel. Everything else builds on it.
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