Question from Reddit user:
My company uses Zoho’s CRM to track and manage leads.
Our users submit leads by sending an email to an email address that we’ve created specifically for this purpose.
This email must follow a certain format.
The trigger for this particular Zap is the email’s inbox.
The Action will only continue if the “From” email address is set in the filters list.
Action will send email via SMTP by Zapier to the Zoho CRM email address and the lead will be added to the CRM.
We are planning to switch to GoHighLevel.
Can you please explain how I would configure this Zapier function to work with GHL?
I am told that each user would require a different API and I am not too sure how I would manage that.
Thanks in advance.
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
You can absolutely recreate this Zapier flow in the GoHighLevel (GHL) environment, but the steps are different because you won’t be sending an email to GHL.
Instead, you’ll update your Zap to use the LeadConnector app (which is the name for GHL’s Zapier connection).
The new Zap will have the same email inbox trigger, but the final action will be LeadConnector > Add/Update Contact and/or Add Lead to Workflow.
You’ll map the required lead fields from the parsed email content (which you’ll need to extract, possibly using Zapier’s Formatter or another email parsing tool) directly into the GHL action step.
Regarding the API keys, you won’t need a different one for every user; you’ll use a single Agency API Key or a specific Sub-Account API Key to connect the LeadConnector app to Zapier, and then use GHL’s Workflows to assign the lead to the correct internal user based on data extracted from the email.
The long answer is:
Your existing flow – email trigger, filter for a specific sender, then send to a Zoho-specific email address – is a neat workaround, but GHL handles inbound leads very differently and much more efficiently.
To port your Zap to GHL, you need to change the final step from an outbound email (SMTP) to an inbound data action.
The first two steps of your Zap remain the same: Trigger is your shared lead email inbox, and the Filter checks the “From” email address.
The final step is where the major change occurs.
You will select LeadConnector as the action app.
Within this app, you have two primary actions that will replace your old flow: the first is Add/Update Contact, where you must map the sender’s details (email, name, phone if available, and the core message) from the parsed email body/fields into the corresponding GHL contact fields.
The second is an optional but highly recommended action, Add Lead to Workflow, which immediately enrolls the new contact into a GHL Workflow.
This is where you would handle the logic that was previously managed by your team, such as sending notifications, assigning the lead to a user, and starting follow-up sequences.
This setup centralizes all your automation within GHL.
Regarding the API keys for multiple users, you’ve been given slightly misleading information.
You don’t manage individual user API keys for Zapier integration.
GHL operates with a hierarchical API structure.
For Zapier to connect to your GHL account, it typically requires either the main Agency API Key (if you’re an agency owner managing multiple sub-accounts) or the specific Sub-Account API Key (now often managed through a system called Private Integrations for more secure, permission-based access) for the GHL location where the leads will be added.
You only need to input one of these keys into Zapier when you first connect the LeadConnector app.
Once connected, the Zapier action allows you to specify a user to assign the lead to, usually by mapping a value from the incoming email to the GHL user ID or email address field.
A better, more advanced solution that removes the Zapier dependency and the need to constantly monitor a complex external integration is to fully control the process using the HighLevel API with a dedicated server-side environment.
You could set up an incoming webhook in a server environment like Google Cloud Platform or a service like Stape (which runs on a cloud server).
This server would receive the lead email, process the structured data, and then use the HighLevel API to create the contact directly in GHL.
This approach gives you complete control over data parsing, validation, and user assignment logic, eliminating the risk of Zapier outages or data mapping errors and ultimately providing a faster, more reliable, and future-proof lead ingestion pipeline for your company.
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