Writing

Why I think you should own your website

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Website builders have gotten very good. You can describe a site and have a working draft in minutes. I use them, and I build a lot of my agency work on GoHighLevel.

But I kept hitting the same wall. The site lived inside the platform. If you wanted the actual files, to host them somewhere else, hand them to a developer or just keep a copy, there often wasn't a clean way to get them.

So I built one

That's why I made FreeMyGHL, a Chrome extension that exports the site you built so you own the code. It works with GoHighLevel AI Studio, Lovable, Bolt, Framer, v0, Cursor and Webflow.

I built the whole thing myself: the extension, the licensing backend, payments and the marketing site.

This isn't anti-platform

I'm not telling anyone to leave GoHighLevel. It runs a big part of my agency. Ownership is just good practice, the same way you keep a copy of your contracts even if you trust the office they're filed in.

What owning it gets you

A copy you control. The option to host it where you want. Something to hand a developer when you outgrow the builder. And the peace of mind that years of work aren't tied to one login.

If you've built something you care about, keep a copy of it. That's the whole idea.

Brandon Rangel is a founder in Lubbock, Texas. He started 806 Growth, 806 Connect and FreeMyGHL, and serves as president of United Neighborhood Outreach. More about Brandon.