topic Re: Salesforce and Hubspot Sync: Create New Leads in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Salesforce and Hubspot Sync: Create New Leads

JoeWu123 — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 02:37:06 GMT

Hello! I am currently trying to decide whether we should migrate to Hubspot from our current MAP and I have a few questions. I am reading one of the resources that's available and two things stood out from this article https://knowledge.hubspot.com/salesforce/manage-your-salesforce-integration-settings?hubs_content=knowledge.hubspot.com/salesforce/salesforce-integration-faq:

"if new Salesforce leads or contacts are set to create HubSpot contacts, a corresponding contact will be created or deduplicated in HubSpot when a Salesforce lead or contact is created, even if the HubSpot contact is not in the inclusion segment. Further updates to the contact/lead from either HubSpot or Salesforce will not sync to the other platform"

- So let's say that Sales creates a new lead/contact in Salesforce because a prospect wants to get added into the newsletters/emails, etc., and the contact/lead becomes a new record in Hubspot. Does that mean that whatever activities we want to sync over to Salesforce, won't ever sync over? Is there a way to enable a bi-directional sync from prospects created from Salesforce to Hubspot so that all appropriate fields are continuously updated?

"if Create or update a lead is selected, it is advised to turn off the setting to automatically create and associate companies with contacts in HubSpot. Salesforce leads do not have accounts, and the Salesforce integration uses associated contacts to deduplicate companies, not the domain. When a HubSpot contact is initially created as Salesforce lead with no account, as soon as you manually create an account or convert the lead to a contact in Salesforce, a duplicate company will be created in HubSpot.

If you want the automatically create and associate companies with contacts setting turned on, it is strongly recommended to sync HubSpot contacts to Salesforce as contacts in order to avoid duplicates being created."

- What's the best practice regarding this? Would it be better to just flow steps in Salesforce to assign a contact a account once someone converts and then have that information sync over to Hubspot?

Re: Salesforce and Hubspot Sync: Create New Leads

CarolinaDeMares — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 12:58:45 GMT

Hey @JoeWu123, Great questions! both points usually come down to alignment of sync rules rather than hard limitations.

Let's break it down by points:

- Does that mean that whatever activities we want to sync over to Salesforce won’t ever sync over? Is there a way to enable bi-directional sync? Short answer is sync is conditional but that does NOT mean activities won't ever sync to SF.

the behavior described in the article only applies when a lead or contact is created outside of HubSpot’s inclusion criteria. In that case, HubSpot will still create or deduplicate the contact once, but ongoing bi-directional sync (fields and activities) will only continue once the record meets the inclusion rules again. As long as your inclusion list accounts for Salesforce-created prospects (e.g. via lifecycle stage, source, or marketing contact status), continuous two-way syncing works as expected.

- What’s the best practice here? Should Salesforce handle account assignment and sync that to HubSpot?

Short answer: Yes, Salesforce should remain the source of truth for accounts.

Since Salesforce Leads don’t have Accounts, enabling automatic company creation in HubSpot often results in duplicates once leads are converted. The recommended setup is to disable auto-company creation in HubSpot, let Salesforce handle lead conversion and account assignment, and sync those associations into HubSpot.

In ZUID we can help if further support is needed for your Salesforce to HubSpot migration, we often offer free consultations if needed 😊

Carolina De Mares

ZUID.
Goirkekanaaldijk 12
5046 AT Tilburg
Nederland

Re: Salesforce and Hubspot Sync: Create New Leads

RubenBurdin — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 17:57:30 GMT

Hey @JoeWu123 ,

Carolina gave you a solid breakdown of how the native integration works. The inclusion list behavior is one of those things that trips up a lot of teams during migration because it seems like the sync should just work both ways but theres actually conditional logic under the hood.

On your first question, yeah the native sync will work bidirectionally once the record meets your inclusion criteria. But the tricky part is that gap period where Salesforce creates a lead and HubSpot has the contact but updates arent flowing. Depending on your sales process that window can cause real problems, especially if reps are updating fields in Salesforce expecting marketing to see them immediately.

For the company duplication issue, Carolinas advice is spot on. Letting Salesforce handle account assignment and disabling auto company creation in HubSpot is the safest approach with the native connector. The alternative is a lot of cleanup work and merge operations that nobody wants to deal with.

One thing worth knowing is that these limitations exist because the native integration wasnt really built for complex bidirectional scenarios. If you find the inclusion list rules too restrictive or you need true real time sync without the conditions, tools like Stacksync can handle that by syncing through a database layer where you control the logic completely. We see a lot of teams hit exactly these pain points after migration and wish theyd known the constraints earlier.

What does your current lead flow look like? Are sales reps creating most new records in Salesforce or do they mostly come through marketing in HubSpot first?

Re: Salesforce and Hubspot Sync: Create New Leads

JoeWu123 — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:27:46 GMT

This is wonderful, thank you!

Re: Salesforce and Hubspot Sync: Create New Leads

JPuenter — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 13:23:13 GMT

Hey @JoeWu123 ,

Carolina and Ruben already raised several important points. Since we've just gone through a HS-to-SF-integration ourselves, I thought I'd mention a few problems we encountered.

The native integration is, well, limited. Depending on your use cases, you might - rather sooner than expected - run into things that just can't be done. It can be something as simple as setting a certain custom field somewhere in SF - maybe the integration can see/access it, maybe not. One of our subsidiaries moved away from the native integration for that very reason. They now use a middleware (Zapier I believe) for far greater control and options.

Our greatest headache actually was setting up visibility rules so that the integration sees only those contacts in SF that we want synced bidirectionally. Easy enough if you want to sync all contacts between SF and HS, but as soon as you deviate from that, it can get a bit tricky.

Another unexpected problem arose when we tried to sync subscription states (to Newsletters...) between SF and HS. We had to create several new fields in SF just to get the sync working correctly.

Anyway, all this certainly depends on your specific use cases, your setup in SF / HS and so on. Just saying that while 'native integration' sounds nice and easy, the reality can be a bit less nice and easy. I'm not sure off the top of my head if you can run the integration with a free HS license, but if so, you might want to do that and try things out before you decide.

Hope that helps, have a nice day

Re: Salesforce and Hubspot Sync: Create New Leads

JoeWu123 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 04:22:12 GMT

Hi Ruben, so as long as the lead in Hubspot is in the inclusion list, they will continue to be synced but what happens if for whatever reason they fall out of the inclusion list, since I'm guessing the inclusion list is dynamically updated? Would that mean that the sync is broken between the two systems?

"But the tricky part is that gap period where Salesforce creates a lead and HubSpot has the contact but updates arent flowing." Would it be better to create a custom field and have it be part of the inclusion segment where if a field like "Sync to Hubspot" is marked as true, sync the two records over? Is that something that we can do?

Oh and I am just seeing this as well: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/salesforce/salesforce-integration-sync-triggers

Let's say a contact in Hubspot is not synced to Salesforce because it's not part of the inclusion segment (it's missing information, etc. etc.). However they filled out a form which is one of the automatic sync triggers, does this mean that it will establish a bi-directional sync or does that trigger only happen if there's an already established sync between the Hubspot and Salesforce record a la inclusion segment?

Re: Salesforce and Hubspot Sync: Create New Leads

BérangèreL — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:26:45 GMT

Hi @JoeWu123, getting back to you on this!

The inclusion segment is often the source of that “gap” in syncing you mentioned, here’s a quick breakdown:

What if a contact falls out of the inclusion segment?
Only contacts in the inclusion segment sync between HubSpot and Salesforce.
If a contact leaves the segment, updates stop syncing, but the records remain in both systems.
Sync resumes once the contact meets the segment criteria again.

Using a custom sync field:
Yes, many teams create a custom property (like "Sync to Salesforce") and use it as the filter for the inclusion segment.
This gives you precise control over which contacts sync, avoiding surprises from changing segment criteria.

Do form submissions bypass the segment?
No, form submissions and other triggers won’t sync the contact unless they’re in the inclusion segment. Being added to the segment itself is what triggers sync.

If your integration allows Salesforce to create or merge new HubSpot contacts, this can happen even if they’re not yet in the inclusion segment, but further updates will only sync once the contact meets your criteria.

I hope this helps clarify things!
Bérangère

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