CRM

4952927
Member

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hi, how do I stop Hubspot automatically creating a contact from all emails that come through into my Outlook. These are emails from new organisation I never emailed before, and therefore contacts where HubSpot has never been bbc before.

 

I receive (obviously) many emails from organisations that are not leads/contacts (e.g. emails from company X about their products, which would never be a contact, because I would never sell them anything), but HubSpot log all these organisations into my contacts. I cannot see the option to stop HubSpot doing this.

 

I have been on the online chat with HubSpot for about 1 hour. The girl trying to help me did her best. We answered together several unrelated questions, until she said go on the community and ask for help.

 

If anyone can help please it would be much appreciated. I am a business user trying to validate if my business could benefit from HubSpot. So far I am struggling with basic usability questions, and to find basic answers. The HubSpot staff on the chat are cute and helpful, but not very knowledgeable, and the material on HubSpot is either very generic (e.g. how to create or manage properties), but once you pass the basic, the material does not help troubleshoot what appears to be a usability management issue from my end.

2 Accepted solutions
PamCotton
Solution
Community Manager
Community Manager

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

@McCory , @Rico  @BillyBunter , thank you all for your feedback.

 

I wanted to bring to your attention this specific idea in our ideas forum here .

Where other users would like the same functionality there.

 

Upvoting here will alert our Product Team to the popularity of this request. Doing so will also auto-notify you if/when this functionality becomes available within HubSpot. You may read more about how that review process works here.

 

Kindly,

Pam

Você sabia que a Comunidade está disponível em outros idiomas?
Participe de conversas regionais, alterando suas configurações de idioma !


Did you know that the Community is available in other languages?
Join regional conversations by changing your language settings !




View solution in original post

PamCotton
Solution
Community Manager
Community Manager

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hello @LABN616398223 

 

Thank you for reaching out and sharing your feedback. I apologize for the frustrations and business impact this has caused. Our product team will be providing the most updated information in the idea here

 

The product team last updated with “I will be reviewing this with the team and will post an update. We have a few upcoming features that should address some of this pain so I will share in the next couple of weeks as we have more details. Thank you!”

 

The best way to ensure your specific use case is associated with the idea will be to leave a comment on the idea. Doing so will also ensure you receive updates for this idea as well. 

 

Kindly,
Pam 

Você sabia que a Comunidade está disponível em outros idiomas?
Participe de conversas regionais, alterando suas configurações de idioma !


Did you know that the Community is available in other languages?
Join regional conversations by changing your language settings !




View solution in original post

60 Replies 60
StefaniUAT
Key Advisor

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hello @RobBOz @4952927 @sebiwawibox @Jepinnie,

If you have tried to disconnect your email from the conversation without any luck, I have a couple of suggestions. I am not sure they will solve anyone's issue, however, I thought I would share some thoughts/personal experiences.

 

1. We use the Outlook/HubSpot integration. This defaults each email to become a new contact record if an existing record can not be found. However, the integration also has a checkbox that pops up on each new email that allows you to use the checkbox to specify if you want it to create a new record upon sending the email. We also use a public folder on Outlook that our teams can subscribe to. So we have a "shared inbox" without the contact creation issue in HubSpot. @PamCotton, is the log email checkbox only available to certain users like Sales Pro, Enterprise, etc.??

 

2. We did not want any emails to be recorded for internal exchanges, so we blocked our email domain under settings from ever logging emails. You are also able to add one on one emails to the "do not log" list.

Settings > Email Integrations > Log and Track

I understand updating this on a regular basis is not practical. However, if you want to block certain domains or commonly emailed contacts, you are able.

 

I will keep trying to brainstorm some more thoughts.

Best,
Stefani Johnson
Defect and Database Administrator
University of Advancing Technology
uat.edu I Earn Tech Respect
PamCotton
Community Manager
Community Manager

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hi @StefaniUAT ,

 

Thank you also for helping here, the log and track checkbox is part of the HubSpot Sales extension, and is currently available to All products and plans.

 

Kindly,

Pam

Você sabia que a Comunidade está disponível em outros idiomas?
Participe de conversas regionais, alterando suas configurações de idioma !


Did you know that the Community is available in other languages?
Join regional conversations by changing your language settings !




RobBOz
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Finding this thread will save me a lot of heartache in trying to work this problem out.

It's clear that Hubspot see this as "expected behaviour" and from the lack of response to this thread, they do not see the problems their customers are facing to be important.

This "expected behaviour" in itself is enough to make me look elsewhere for my company's CRM solution.

sebiwawibox
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

I can say that the "expected behaviour" is definitely not useful for our use-case. We also put our shared general mail address in the inbox to optimize the workflow when customers write to us. But this email also gets spam etc., which always creates new contacts that we have to delete and block manually. Would definitely love the option to toggle between "create new contacts" on/off in den inbox setting

PamCotton
Community Manager
Community Manager

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hello @sebiwawibox  I would like to apologize for the frustrations, data issues, and business impact this has caused. 

 

I would highly recommend you to please post this idea at our ideas forum (here).

Our product team, who monitors the forum regularly, can read your specific use case and understand why this would be a useful functionality or change. It also helps other customers facing the same issue to advocate for its implementation on your behalf by upvoting on the thread as well.

 

As @RobBOz  could you please provide us more information in what is happening in your end? Are you also connecting your inbox as shared and it's creating new contacts in your account? 

 

The more information, screenshots, and details you can provide, the better I can advise on the next steps.

 

Thank you

Pam

Você sabia que a Comunidade está disponível em outros idiomas?
Participe de conversas regionais, alterando suas configurações de idioma !


Did you know that the Community is available in other languages?
Join regional conversations by changing your language settings !




0 Upvotes
RobBOz
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

@PamCotton sorry, but I am not doing Hubspots job for you.

 

I have tried to have this discussion with your online support and now in sheer frustration, I was looking for answers in this community. I now find that people have been complaining about this problem for a long time.

 

If someone wants to speak to me over the phone, then fine. But the problem is pretty self explanatory.

If my wife send me an email to the email address linked with Hubspot, I don't want Hubspot to automatically add her email address to me CRM! Simple. Let me decide which contact gets added to the system.

PamCotton
Community Manager
Community Manager

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hello @RobBOz,

 

Thank you for your feedback, our ideas forum is monitored by our product team constantly and the reason I suggested here is that there are so many customers that are sharing their feedback and possible implementation of this idea in the future.

 

Currently, when you connect your team’s shared inbox to conversations, all incoming emails will be sent to this inbox.
The idea is to centralize communication with your contacts, for example, your Technical Support team would answer every incoming email to that inbox, A team email address is an email address that multiple users have access to and use to communicate with contacts. you can find more information here

 

With that being said, as a few options, you are able to :

 

  1. Disconnect your inbox from a Shared inbox and connect as personal inbox, this way you are able to control what emails are logged and tracked in HubSpot.
  2. You can use a list to filter contacts with an original source drill-down of "Conversations" and delete these contacts after.
  3. Configure your filtering rules in your inbox settings to keep your inbox free from emails that don't require your team's attention.  ( More information about this feature here ).

If you would like to have a call with the Technical Support team, it would be necessary to have Pro or Enterprise subscription, you can find more information here.

 

I hope this information helps.

Pam

 

 

Você sabia que a Comunidade está disponível em outros idiomas?
Participe de conversas regionais, alterando suas configurações de idioma !


Did you know that the Community is available in other languages?
Join regional conversations by changing your language settings !




TWentworth4
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hubspot charges per contact. I just deleted 2,000 spam contacts that should have never been added. Seems pretty stupid that every email you get would create a contact, except that it racks up your monthly bill. 

jeffhickey
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

I'll apologize in advance for the rant but as a new HubSpot user responsible for implementation and who's already getting slammed with complaints about this issue from all of our users, I find it terribly disheartening to see this thread only to be responded to with canned responses such as "please provide....", "this is expected behavior....", and offering workarounds including deleting emails that have been created that you don't want.  

If, as you say, the HubSpot technical teams monitor this "Community", can you explain why this issue thread goes back well over a year with numerous complaints AND suggested fixes from users all with NO action from HS about the issue (and please don't direct me to your "ideas" portal to submit a request for functionality that really should be part of the baseline).  

As many others have said, this is an easy fix - give users a simple option to create or not create contacts based on email content - Yes / No.  As a Product Manager and Director of Tech myself, it's really frustrating and very disappointing to have spent so much money, time and resource on implementation of this product only to find some very elementary issues going unaddressed and customer feedback over a prolonged period being dismissed.  

 

"Expected behavior...."  --  Really?

Teej
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

EDIT:

I agree that this is bad.

BillyBunter
Contributor

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hi HubSpot team:

 

I'm facing this same issue, and reading the responses, I'm not sure you realise how annoying this "expected behaviour" is. I thought I'd detail it out for your product team to look at.

 

Shared inboxes, in the real world, tend to be public email addresses, the sort you put on your website so that people can contact you. Over time, spammers harvest these addresses and every day you get more spam than useful email. With the default HubSpot behaviour, each spam email means three actions - mark the email as spam, go to contacts and delete the contact and go to companies and delete the company. Obviously, this is an unnecessary waste of time.

 

All that is needed to fix this is one single flag in the shared inbox setup that stops mails to that shared inbox creating contacts and companies.

 

Is this something you may be able to schedule?

 

Thanks.

Jepinnie
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Totally agree with you. It is such a drain on resources having to manually delete contacts that have been set up automatically from spam emails.

bostshakur
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Going through the same thing. Talked to a hubspot rep on the phone who gave me this link as a solution... Lo and behold that it doesnt seem to be a solution here on this page

jennysowyrda
Community Manager
Community Manager

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hi @4952927,

 

It sounds like you've connected your inbox to HubSpot conversations in which case the behavior you're experiencing is expected behavior. If you aren't interested in the functionality you can either disconnect your inbox, or connect a different inbox to that channel. 

 

If you are a new user to HubSpot and are looking to gain more insight into how to use the software, I wanted to share the User Success Coach webinar series that runs weekly. It is a free webinar to help new users learn how to succeed with HubSpot.

 

Thanks,
Jenny

VitalityWrks
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hi Jenny, 

 

Disconnecting the inbox really isn't that helpful a solution. 

 

Our sales team generally tick the box that says "log to CRM" as good practice to ensure all activity with known contacts are logged. However, if the email is unknown then hubspot creates a new contact, which circumvents all the required fields for creating a new contact. 

 

This results in a "dirty" database with missing fields, incomplete data. As we use this as an actual CRM we want to know as much as we can about a contact/company, and an email address is only good for spam. 

 

I can see that this has been discussed in a few other threads but HS doesn't seem to be "getting" the issue at hand here, as it's still a web-marketing focused CRM, while this was sold to us as a real CRM.

 

Any update on when we can expect some sort of action on this?

Omer-SportsIQ
Participant

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hi - have you ever found a solution for this? I'm having the same issue and it's driving me crazy that every email I receive in my inbox is created as a new contact in Hubspot. Like you, I only want relevent email conversations to be added.

 

Thanks,

Omer

RamovaMusic
Member

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

I just want to comment on this as well to help communicate to the Hubspot team that this is important. This issue is driving me crazy and I'm sure it's a relatively simple fix.

 

Hubspot, please do something about this. Perhaps change the functionality so that it logs emails only from addresses that are already entered into Hubspot?

Rico
Member

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

I totally agree. The thing is I am pretty sure that at one point, I was asked if I wanted unknown senders to be added automatically to the CRM (I unfortunately said yes). I can't remember where that setting was... Anyone can help?

ThreadsHelp2018
Top Contributor

How to stop HubSpot creating contacts from all emails I receive in Outlook?

SOLVE

Hi

 

We recently wrote an article on this in case this is helpful. Our integration with HubSpot can prevent this happening as well as well as offering a host of other features to help your team keep your HubSpot deals and contacts up to date automatically.