Title: Urgent need for spam filtering and bulk cleanup tools in Conversations Inbox

HubSpot Ideas
1

Our shared inbox has recently been flooded with thousands of spam emails, many of which were sent via HubSpot domains like “notifybf1.hubspot.com”. Each of these emails automatically created a new contact in our CRM, filling the database with fake leads and compromising our operations.

Here are the critical issues:

1. No ability to filter messages in the Conversations Inbox
There is currently no way to filter inbound messages by subject line, domain, contact owner, or custom tags. This makes it impossible to locate and manage spam or unwanted emails efficiently. A professional-grade inbox should provide:

  • Subject line filtering
  • Domain-based filtering
  • Owner/contact property filters
  • Tag or keyword filters (preferably with automation rules)

2. Automatic contact creation from spam emails
When spam messages arrive, HubSpot creates new contacts even if those emails come from suspicious sources. There should be a stronger spam detection system and a toggle option to prevent auto-creation of contacts from unknown senders or based on deny-lists.

3. Bulk delete is insufficiently powerful
Deleting 100 conversations or contacts at a time is not scalable when faced with thousands of spam records. We need a “select all matching” option that allows deletion of all results from a search/filter, without pagination.

4. No spam detection built into the Inbox or CRM contact creation flow
Many messages came from legit-looking HubSpot subdomains that were exploited for mass mailing. These passed through without triggering any security flag.

Suggested features:

  • Rule-based filtering options (e.g., if subject contains, if domain equals, etc.)
  • Ability to block specific domains and auto-delete their emails
  • A “spam report” function inside the Inbox
  • Workflow triggers based on conversation content (e.g., auto-close or delete if subject matches a regex)
  • CRM setting to disable auto-contact creation from emails unless manually approved or from known domains

Additional improvements to consider:

  • Custom inbox rules like Gmail/Outlook:
    User-defined conditions to automatically delete, assign, or ignore messages.
  • Automatic tagging of incoming messages:
    Based on keywords, sender or email structure, usable for filtering or workflows.
  • Webhook/API integration with external spam filters:
    Allow connection with services like SpamAssassin for pre-processing email content before it creates records in HubSpot.
  • Spam quarantine section:
    A staging area where suspicious emails are held for manual approval before triggering workflows or creating contacts.
  • Alert system for abnormal activity:
    Notify admins if an unusual volume of contacts is created in a short period (e.g., >50 per hour).

This issue made our entire portal unusable for several hours and required extensive manual cleanup. It should be a priority to offer scalable, flexible tools to protect users from this kind of disruption.

Thanks for considering this. We love HubSpot, but cannot risk operational downtime again due to the lack of basic filters and controls.

2

Absolutely, please address this. #2 is particularly irritating: we’ve got hundreds of auto-created contacts from messages classified as Spam and no way of finding them again to delete them.

At the very least, if conversations were to be tagged with a) the folder the message landed in and b) whether we replied or not, we could write workflows that go through the conversation lists and tidy up the contacts (probably with a 7 day delay to allow for false positives to be caught)

3 
Upvoted — this matches what we hit on Shared Inbox: deny list helps known senders, but rotating outreach still lands and creates contacts; “Mark as spam” doesn’t auto-deny; bulk cleanup doesn’t scale when you’re deleting 100 at a time against thousands of junk records.

While native subject/body rules, stronger spam detection before contact creation, and “select all matching” cleanup would be ideal, teams that need something today can (a) tighten provider quarantine, (b) Ops Hub custom code on conversation content, or (c) a Marketplace app that scores Shared Inbox messages.

Disclosure: we built Inbox Spam Filter for that gap (AI score + reasoning, optional spam_filter_status on contacts). Not a substitute for native tooling, but useful if you’re drowning while waiting on Ideas

Would love HubSpot’s take on content-based inbox rules + select-all cleanup.