Creating contacts with no email address via API

[LMartinezRive]

Hi,

We need to create contacts via API with no email address. Is that possible? Could you pls indicate how?

Thanks!

Lorena

[LMartinezRive]

And just another question.

Is there was  another field that we could use as identifier - Do you know if Hubspot allows, via API, to upload two contacts with same address?

As of now, via API, Hubspot does not allow to upload two contacts with same email address bc email address is the identifier. If there is the posibility of using another field as identifier, do you think it is possible to upload two contacts with same email address?

Thank you!

Lorena

[Olivia_Bagnall]

@LMartinezRive Happy to help here! 

When using the 'CREATE A CONTACT' api (https://legacydocs.hubspot.com/docs/methods/contacts/create_contact) the email parameter is actually not mandatory. It is optional to give contacts and email when creating them via API. That being said, I would highly recommend creating them with an email address when possible. 

[LMartinezRive]

Hi @Olivia_Bagnall 

Thank you for your quick answer! I have another question 🙂 

Our current case is that client has in his database, contacts with same email. As the email is the field that Hubspot uses to identify a contact, we are not able to create all contacts because we do not have an unique email for each contact. Is there another field that we could use as identifier so when we upload contacts we make sure that we do not have duplicated contacts? If so, could you pls indicate how to do it?

Our "solution" as of now, is to upload some contacts with no email address which has the con of not being able to send marketing actions and also, that contacts can be duplicated.  If there is another solution that you might think is easier, i would be grateful if you could share it with us.

Thank you in advance for your time and help.

KR,

Lorena

[Olivia_Bagnall · Accepted solution]

Hi @LMartinezRive 

The way HubSpot is designed, it is not possible to change what is used as the unique identifier for contacts. I think the main question to ask here would be 'why do we have so many contacts with the same email?'. 

Migrating data to HubSpot is an excelent oppurtunity to clean it. Maybe if you have many contacts with the same email it's because they work at the same company. In this case, I would create a company record and associate them all too it. 

You could then use their CONTACT ID as their. unique identifier when updating via import.