Hey team 👋

First of all — Custom Objects + Associations are a game-changer.

They unlock a deeper CRM that goes beyond “single contact per record.” I love using associations to support real-world relationships like:

Husband ↔ Wife

Parent ↔ Child

Member ↔ Coach

Resident ↔ Carer

Student ↔ Teacher

This gives huge value to verticals like dance studios, gyms, schools, childcare, aged care, and medical practices where contacts naturally exist in relationship groups.

🚨 But the 1,000 association limit is a major blocker

In the current setup, a standard family structure quickly consumes these associations:

Example: Parent ↔ Child

2 parents + 1 child = 2 associations

2 parents + 2 kids = 4 associations

2 parents + 3 kids = 6 associations

That means:

Family size Associations used Business hits limit at…

1 child 2 500 families

2 children 4 250 families

3 children 6 166 families

For many of my clients, 250–600 family relationships is TINY. A busy dance school or gym easily handles 1,500–4,000 family/member relationships.

🏁 Result: We can’t confidently sell this feature

Ethically, I must tell customers upfront about the cap. But doing so kills confidence and potentially drives them to other CRMs that support scalable relationship mapping.

GHL’s own documentation states:

“The association limit is set to prevent performance issues and can’t be changed.”

I totally understand the intent — performance matters.

But as it stands, the limit forces us to cap who we can sell GHL to.

This is business-limiting for us and for you.

✅ Proposal

Please raise the association limit to something practical:

➡️ Minimum viable expansion: 20,000 associations per sub-account

This would allow:

Larger revenue-generating studios and gyms

Multi-branch operators

Verticals with natural multi-contact households

More impactful automation and personalization

Even better:

✔ Tiered limits based on plan level

✔ Ability to request increase via support

✔ Optimizations that allow scaling without performance issues

💡 Why this matters for GHL long-term

Drives more mid-market adoption

Makes GHL truly competitive with vertical CRMs

Unlocks more automation and AI use cases

Prevents need for external databases/workarounds

Increases customer retention (ours & yours)

❤️ In short

You built an AMAZING feature — but the current limit makes it impossible to deploy at scale in the industries that need it most.

Please consider raising (or allowing paid expansion of) association limits so GHL can continue to scale with real-world business needs.

Thanks for considering this — happy to provide further examples or testing support. 🙏