Hubspot x Salesforce integration - Lead creation

[SmartListGhost]

Hi all, 

I need some help regarding lead creation with a Hubspot x Salesforce sync. Currently if someone already exists as a lead or contact in Salesforce, if they were to fill out our contact us form, it simply updates that contact in Hubspot and then the subsequent record in Salesforce (regardless if they are a lead or contact). The team I'm working with expect for Hubspot to create a new lead (or recreate it) if someone fills out this contact us form. 

From my understanding and research, Hubspot cannot create a new lead if that email already exists. Is that correct or am I missing something? I Mostly just want to confirm Hubspot can't force that and it's something that needs to be taken care of on the Salesforce side, if even doable. 

Thanks!

[GRajput]

Hi @SmartListGhost 

Yes, you are right, HubSpot cannot create a new lead (or duplicate contact) if a contact with the same email address already exists in the system.
If creating a new lead is essential, even when the email already exists, you'll need to handle it on the Salesforce side.
This can be done using a custom Apex trigger or Flow that listens for specific updates from HubSpot (like form submissions or lifecycle stage changes) and creates a new lead based on defined conditions.
To support this, you can add a hidden field in the HubSpot form (e.g., "Request New Lead") and use a corresponding custom property in Salesforce to trigger the logic.
Alternatively, a middleware tool can be used to intercept form submissions and create new Salesforce leads with custom rules, bypassing HubSpot’s email-based deduplication.

I hope this will help you out. Please mark it as Solution Accepted and upvote to help another Community member.
Thanks!

[TomM2 · Accepted solution]

Hey @SmartListGhost you are correct. HubSpot "contacts" sync to both salesforce "contacts" and "leads". 

HubSpot always uses an email address to de-duplicate contacts, so you can only have a single contact record per email address, thus you can only have one SFDC "lead" or "contact" synced to this HubSpot record. So once a new submission comes through to HubSpot, it's just going to update your existing synced record and it won't create a new one. Depending on the use case, there may be a few options. For example I previously worked with a company who had a high volume call center, every form submission was followed up by a new person and needed it's own "Record", so once a contact submits a form we used workflows to create a new deal record for that form submission, then assign tasks to a rep to call them. These can be synced to SF "opportunities" too and will always create a new opportunity record.