Administration of User Permissions and Templates

Smart CRM & Sales Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
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1

Hi everyone,

I’m cleaning up our user/permission setup in HubSpot and I’m a bit lost on what’s “best practice”. I’d love some guidance on how other teams do this.

1. Real permission templates vs. copying from an existing user

Right now, when I edit a user I see HubSpot’s built-in role presets like:

  • Sales rep
  • Service rep / Service manager
  • Marketing management, etc.

As far as I can see, I can select one of these, but I can’t see or edit the underlying permission matrix.

My questions:

  1. Is there a way in HubSpot to create our own permission sets / roles (e.g. “Administration – standard”, “Sales – standard”, “Fulfillment – consultant”, “Marketing – standard”) that we can assign when creating a user?
  2. Or is the only option on some plans to copy permissions from an existing user (“copy permissions from user X”) each time?
  3. If custom roles / permission sets are available only on certain subscriptions, how can I quickly see in the UI whether our portal has this feature enabled?

2. “Template users” that don’t cost extra seats

Because we don’t want to depend on one real person (e.g. Aylin in Administration) as the “master” for permissions, I’m considering creating template users, for example:

  • TPL – Administration
  • TPL – Sales
  • TPL – Fulfillment (Consultants)
  • TPL – Marketing

The idea would be:

  • Give each template user exactly the permissions we want for that department.
  • When a new employee joins, create them in HubSpot and copy permissions from the appropriate template user.

Questions:

  1. Can these template users exist without consuming paid Sales/Service seats (i.e. as free/CRM-only users)?
  2. Is there any downside or known pitfall to using this “template user” pattern?

3. Using Teams + properties for roles like Lead Caller (LC), Quali Caller, etc.

We already use Teams for role-style groupings:

  • Lead Caller
  • Quali Caller
  • Consultants
  • etc.

We also have contact properties like “LC” (lead caller), “QC” etc. These are currently dropdown properties with manually maintained name options (we add/remove names by hand).

What I would like:

  • If a user is in the Team “Lead Caller”, their name should automatically be available / selected in the LC property for contacts.

Questions:

  1. Is there any no-code way to connect Teams with a dropdown property (e.g. “all members of Team Lead Caller are valid LC options”)?

  2. Is it better to switch those fields to the property type “HubSpot user” instead of a dropdown with names, and then:

    • use Teams only for grouping,
    • choose the responsible user from the “HubSpot user” property?

  3. If we use “HubSpot user” properties:

    • Can we filter or report by Teams (e.g. “LC is a user from Team Lead Caller”)?
    • Or would we need some kind of integration / workflow code to sync Teams into a normal dropdown property?
2

Hi @PBallerscheff :waving_hand:

Thanks for laying this out so clearly — user permissions, roles, and scaling access cleanly is one of those areas where “best practice” really matters long-term.

I’d like to invite a few Community members who are subject matter experts in HubSpot user permissions, teams, and account governance to join this conversation.
@Brenner_Natal @CarolinaDeMares @franksteiner79 — hope you’re all having a great week! How do you typically approach permission templates vs. copying users, the idea of “template users” that don’t consume seats, and the use of Teams + user properties for operational roles like LC/QC? Any product-accurate guidance or patterns you’ve seen work well would be hugely appreciated.

Looking forward to the discussion.
Best,
Victor

3

Hi @PBallerscheff :waving_hand:

Thanks for laying this out so clearly — user permissions, roles, and scaling access cleanly is one of those areas where “best practice” really matters long-term.

I’d like to invite a few Community members who are subject matter experts in HubSpot user permissions, teams, and account governance to join this conversation.
@Brenner_Natal @CarolinaDeMares @franksteiner79 — hope you’re all having a great week! How do you typically approach permission templates vs. copying users, the idea of “template users” that don’t consume seats, and the use of Teams + user properties for operational roles like LC/QC? Any product-accurate guidance or patterns you’ve seen work well would be hugely appreciated.

Looking forward to the discussion.
Best,
Victor

4

Hi @PBallerscheff

Great questions and honestly this is one of those areas where HubSpot’s documentation is a bit scattered so I get the confusion. Let me try to address each part.

On custom permission sets, yes they exist but only on Enterprise tiers. If you’re on Pro you wont see the option to create reusable permission templates, you’re stuck with the built in presets or copying from an existing user. To check if you have it, go to Settings > Users & Teams and look for a “Roles” or “Permission Sets” tab, if its not there your subscription doesnt include it (HubSpot user permissions guide).

Your template user idea is actually a pretty common workaround on Pro portals. The trick is to make sure those template users are set as “Core Seat” only and not assigned Sales Hub or Service Hub paid seats, that way they dont consume your paid seat count. Just be careful not to accidentally include them in reports or assign them to records. Some people prefix them with “ZZZ” so they sort to the bottom of user lists.

For the Teams and properties question, theres no native no code way to automatically populate a dropdown based on Team membership unfortunately. Your instinct to switch to “HubSpot user” property type is the right move here. That way the field always shows current active users and you dont have to manually update dropdowns when someone joins or leaves. You can then filter reports by checking if the user in that field belongs to a certain Team, HubSpot does support that in custom reports. If you ever needed to sync user or team data from an external system into HubSpot, something like Stacksync could help with that, but for purely internal HubSpot user management switching to user type properties should solve most of your headaches.

One small gotcha, if you use “HubSpot user” properties make sure your team understands they’re selecting from all portal users not just their department. You might need to train people to look for the right names or consider a naming convention that makes it obvious who belongs to which team.

Hope this helps clarify things a bit. Note: The content is based on my personal experience and was refined using AI for better clarity.

5

Hi Ruben!
My understanding was that Core Seats themselves are paid seats, and only view-only users are free. In HubSpot’s new seat-based model (from March 2024), pricing is determined by the number of Core Seats (active users who can edit, log, etc.), while View-Only Seats are free and unlimited. Additional Core Seats are billed per user per month, whereas view-only seats are not.

See for example HubSpot partner explanations of the new model, which describe Core Seats as the billable seats and View-Only as free seats.

Based on that, a “template user” configured as a Core Seat would still count as a paid seat, even if they don’t have extra Sales or Service add-ons. Am I missing something here, or is your answer assuming the older (pre-seat-based) licensing model?

6

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I want to update bulk user permission but it’s not working

7

Hi team,

I am trying to update access in bulk but its not working.

I want to remove import and export access from all the non admin users but its not working

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8

Thank you for posting your question @RMahanta

Quick question: if the permissions look right but it’s still not working, do this check: have you tried logging in an incognito/private window (or another browser) to rule out caching or an active session?

Thanks!

Victor

9

Hi everyone,

I had a client ask the exact same question about permission management today.

In theory, the “template user” approach works. In practice, however, many of my clients need every Core Seat they have available, so creating additional template users is often not a realistic option.

For Enterprise portals, Permission Sets are definitely the cleaner solution, but for Professional subscriptions I still haven’t found a truly elegant best-practice approach.

@OliverFedtke @ErikDreymann @EmilyVoigt Has anyone from the team found a good way to handle this?

Regarding Teams and properties, I’d generally recommend using Teams for structure and reporting, and HubSpot user properties for assigning responsibilities.

Both can be used in reporting, but whenever possible I would choose HubSpot user properties over dropdowns because they require far less maintenance when users join, leave, or change roles.

The only exception I’ve encountered is when the available users should depend on another field. In a recent project, that requirement made dropdown properties the only practical solution. It worked, but it also introduced additional maintenance because user lists have to be managed manually.

So my recommendation would be: use HubSpot user properties whenever possible, and only fall back to dropdowns when those dependencies are truly required.

Curious to hear how others approach this. I think this is a topic that affects quite a few HubSpot admins, so it would be great to hear some best practices from the community.