28/02/2026
Honest opinion — it's almost always bad structuring, not a GHL limitation.
The most common causes of every problem you listed:
Workflows overlapping — no calendar filter on the trigger. One workflow fires for every calendar instead of the specific one it's meant for. Add a calendar filter to every appointment trigger and overlapping stops immediately.
Random triggers firing — contacts re-entering workflows they've already completed. Turn off re-enrollment on any workflow that should only run once per contact. Also check if you have multiple workflows with the same trigger and no conditions separating them.
Duplicate emails/SMS — usually two workflows both sending the same message, or a workflow with re-enrollment on sending the same message twice to the same contact. Name your actions descriptively and audit which workflows fire on the same trigger.
Hard to debug — this is a real GHL limitation but it's manageable. Name every action and branch descriptively, not "SMS" and "Condition." When something breaks, Ex*****on Logs show you exactly which action failed and why. Most people skip the logs entirely and guess instead.
The "automation to manage automations" feeling is real but it usually means the foundation wasn't built cleanly. One workflow per use case, calendar filters on every trigger, re-enrollment off by default, and descriptive action names. Scale gets a lot cleaner after that.
GHL's automation is genuinely powerful — it just punishes lazy structure more than most platforms.
