Why is there a 500 label limit for columns, can we increase this?

Hi, we use one of our boards to track clients - new and existing. We use labels (created by admin) as our client names, to avoid duplication, typing errors etc. We just hit the 500 label limit so can’t add any new clients. Why is this limit in place? The work arounds seem to be free text, or adding another column - neither work for us. We can’t cap our client list at 500! Please help!

Same issue, currently need about 2k but growing.

Apologies for late reply, but could you perhaps instead use workflows to find duplicates and then put any possible dupes in their own group to be reviewed? For example, there’s an EXACT function that could populate a hidden formula column.