Test emails can be sent (but don't arrive) to non-HubSpot users

AWilling — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 00:41:50 GMT

I have a bit of a strange one.

Most materials I can find online say that it is not possible to send a test marketing email to someone who is not a user in your account. This is fine, and had always been my assumption.

However, a colleague pointed out that it is posible to add a non-HubSpot user as a test recipient.

Provided this user has the same domain as one of your email sending domains, all appears fine - pressing Send generates a confirmation message that the test has been sent. However, we have tested and verified that emails sent to non-user addresses do not arrive.

This is causing confusion for my colleagues, as they expect to be able to send tests to colleagues within the business and are upset when they don't arrive. Furthermore, they insist that they have always been able to send emails this way, but that something has changed within the past few days preventing them from doing so.

My question is, is this expected behaviour or is there a bug? It seems like a weird edge case that could be handled better. The only documentation I can find on this is a single line at the end of this article.

Re: Test emails can be sent (but don't arrive) to non-HubSpot users

karstenkoehler — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 05:12:01 GMT

Hi @AWilling,

I justed tested this in my own portal, one test email to a registered user, one test email to an email addresses added on the go and verified like you described – both test emails arrived in my inbox.

And yes, this feature has existed for at least years no. While it may not be documented in detail, it is expected behavior to be able to do this.

The fact that email is not going through hints at some restrictions in your email infrastructure. Can you review these troubleshooting steps and see if they solve this? https://knowledge.hubspot.com/marketing-email/not-receiving-hubspot-system-or-notification-emails

It is strange that one email would go through, the other wouldn't, I agree. If the article above doesn't yield any results, I'd recommend reaching out to HubSpot support directly. As I said above, I was able to send and receive and email to a non-HubSpot user just moments ago.

Best regards

topic Test emails can be sent (but don't arrive) to non-HubSpot users in Email Deliverability

Test emails can be sent (but don't arrive) to non-HubSpot users

Re: Test emails can be sent (but don't arrive) to non-HubSpot users