Creating a Company & associating to a Contact and Deal via API

[Jonno_Price]

Hello,

We have run into a real shortcoming with using Hubspot & Shopify in a B2B context. 

Shopify creates a Contact and a Deal whenever an order is placed - and it associates them to each other seamlessly. 

A glaring ommission is that for whatever reason it is unable to create a Company object and associate that to the contact and the deal.

Even using tools like Unific (which specifically advertises a solution for this) or upgrading to Shopify Plus (which advertises a B2B Ecommerce solution) - this is not possible. There does not appear to be the ability to capture company data at the point of checkout and use that to create and associate a company / contact & deal via the integration. Not via Shopify <> Hubspot's native integration and not via the Shopify > Unific > Hubspot integration. 

With Unific the only way it will work is if you can match the company domain to the email. But this does not work in all B2B contexts. It is far too limiting. 

What I'm trying to establish is whether this is actually a barrier on Hubspot's side? i.e. is there a reason it is not possible to simultaneously create a contact, company and deal via the API?

Any ideas or feedback appreciated.

Best

[acurtwright]

Hi there!

It's certainly possible to create a company, contact, and deal with associations in HubSpot via API. That said, the integrations you've referenced rely on our Ecommerce Bridge API, which is designed to sync ecommerce data from an external system to contact and deal records in HubSpot. The Ecommerce Bridge specifically does not have infrastructure in place to sync to the company object in HubSpot, which is likely why you're encountering this limitation when searcing for an integration. It's still possible to send company data to HubSpot via API and create associations with deals and contacts syncing with your eCommerce system; however, this would require making a call to our CRM API or Companies API in addition to the eCommerce API, which does not appear to be built in to the Unific integration and is not a part of the Shopify integration. 

Please reach back out if this doesn't answer your question. 

[Jonno_Price]

Hello and thank you for the response. 

Your reply certainly does help explain the issue but if you don't mind me saying, it does not help solve the problem. 

I also find it surprising to learn that the eCommerce Bridge, and the shortcoming of not being able to handle B2B eCommerce, is on the side of Hubspot. 

Shopify support did initially point me to Hubspot but I was sure that it was Shopify that had not integrated with Hubspot correctly and that they were misleading customers by advertising that they could handle B2B eCommerce whilst integrating with Hubspot. Now I know they are correct. The only reason the company data captured at checkout does not sync with Hubspot's company object is because the Hubspot eCommercce Bridge does not allow it to. 

Do you have any idea why the decision was made to only sync contacts and deals and make it impossible to sync the company object at the same time?  

Do you have any suggestions on how this can be solved? 

I have a B2B client who is about to upgrade to Hubspot Growth Suite Bundle (on my recommendation) and who has a B2B eCommerce store with Shopify Plus. However, it is not the correct tech stack to be recommending if we cannot associate ecommerce contacts and deals with companies. 

Any advice / assistance greatly appreciated.

PS: I recieved the following from Shopify Plus support:

"In regards to the HubSpot integration with Shopify I can absolutely see your point of view and the frustration caused by discovering it does not do what you had intended to use it for. While Shopify does approve the integrations available in our App Store any third party integrations are created, and supported by their developer as seen on the App Store page here. As such, there is not anyone on our Product team that I would be able to escalate this matter too.

With this in mind, I do still suggest speaking with Hubspot to provide their developers with this feedback. I cannot speak as to why this detail is not included in the currently available integration by default, but they may be able to clarify or provide a roadmap when that could be available.

I also understand how you may feel this was advertised falsely, but the integration does exist between HubSpot and Shopify for the purposes of B2B management and works as intended according to their documentation. If Hubspot is in anyway like Shopify I am sure they will appreciate the feedback on ways to improve their functionality."

[Jonno_Price · Accepted solution]

By way of an update from our side: we have built an inhouse solution (using Google API, Integromat & Airtable) that uses the shipping address on the contact (synced from Shopify) to find a Google Place ID - it then looks for any companies in Hubspot that have a matching Google Place ID. If it finds it - it will associate the contact and the deal to the company. If the company does not already exist it will create the company and associate both the contact and deal to it. This solution is tested and works nicely. 

Fingers crossed in the future Hubspot's eCommerce Bridge API is updated to allow for company object sync based on b2b orders being recieved via Shopify. 

[dennisedson]

@Jonno_Price ,

Thank you for providing the  update!!!

If it hasn't been added already, you should add your ecommerce bridge suggestion to the ideas board