Why are lead records so different from any other object records? I would like to be able to open the record, add notes, view activities - have the same setup left panel for properties, right panel for associations and center panel for activities. Is this ever going to happen?
It is such an orphan that you don’t even have it in the drop down idea category below.
Any update on this case?
Good question, and you’re not imagining it — leads genuinely are treated differently from contacts, companies, deals, and tickets in HubSpot’s CRM architecture right now.
Why the difference exists:
Lead records currently only get a “preview panel” experience rather than a full standalone record page. When you click into a lead, you’re working from a right-side panel with properties, associations, and activity icons (notes, emails, calls, tasks, meetings) — but it’s not the same fully customizable three-column layout (left sidebar / middle column / right sidebar) that HubSpot has rolled out for contacts, companies, deals, and tickets.
That customizable record layout — with configurable tabs like About, Activities, Catch-up, Intelligence, Revenue, etc. — is explicitly limited to those four “core” objects for now. Leads sit in a bit of an odd spot: they behave more like a workflow/status layer sitting on top of a contact (or company) rather than a fully first-class object with the same page infrastructure.
On the idea board:
You’re right that Leads often isn’t listed as its own category in the Ideas forum — it usually gets filed under "CRM" or “Sales Hub” categories instead, which makes it easy to miss and probably contributes to feedback getting fragmented instead of consolidated into one loud thread.
What you can do:
I don’t have visibility into HubSpot’s internal roadmap, so I can’t say whether or when full parity is planned — but based on the current state of the product, this is a known and reasonable gap, not something you’re missing in settings.