Multiple companies with the same domain

[Fridrik]

I'm sure there must be an answer to this somewhere, but after searching both the knowledge base and the community without finding an answer, I'll just go ahead and ask.

My customers are schools and other educational institutions, and quite often there are several schools with the same domain. This is due to schools often using an email address provided by local, regional, or national government, and in some cases due to them being part of a much larger group of schools that all use the same domain. However, they have separate marketing budgets (which is where my company comes in) and I need to treat them as different companies in hubspot. Some smaller institutions also use gmail, or microsoft live, etc, which would cause similar issues.

What I'd like to know is, is it possible to have multiple companies with the same domain? And are there any possible issues that I should be aware of?

If I link an existing companies domain with a new company, will it be unlinked from the old company?

Also, if it's not possible to have multiple companies with the same domain, is there any good work-around for this issue?

Thankful for any help!

Fridrik

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hello @Fridrik - welcome to the Community!

In answer to your question, I believe it is possible to create companies with the same domain but what you will want to make sure you do is disable automated contact association. 

Contacts and companies are associated based on a shared domain, so this will get tricky if you have multiple companies with the same domain. Check out how this process works and how you can disable it here. 

I'd reccommend testing adding two companies with the same domain, before doing any mass import. 

I'd also reccommend checking out the parent/child company feature. In HubSpot's CRM, you have the ability to associate two companies in a parent-child relationship. To add a parent or child company to an existing company record in the CRM check out this knowledge article. 

I hope the above is of help to you, let me know how you get on with your test!

[Dan1 · Accepted solution]

Hi All, 

This is a challenge!! We get this question a lot, so we put together a video explaining how we do it inside our HubSpot account. There is no silver bullet that automates everything but maybe the steps and workflow in the video may help some other teams. 

All the best ,  

Dan Currin 

Co-Founder 

OrgChartHub 

GeoMapper 

OrgChartHub & GeoMapper named in the Top 30 HubSpot Apps 

[RRhodes8]

Thank you so much! I've been struggling with this very thing and trying to figure out what to do!

[DChaloux]

This is so helpful! Thanks 🙂 

[dougw03]

Hi @Dan1,

Thank you for putting this together. Have you tried importing a parent-child company with the same domain using Hubspot's data file import tool? I imported a sheet of parent accounts and then exported their CompanyID's and used those records to associate a separate file with the child accounts (with same domain as parent). The problem I am running into is the import errors out when you try to import child companies with the same domain. Any ideas how to get around this?

[Dan1]

Hi @dougw03 , Thanks for the kind words. Sorry I haven't ever attempted it on import, as we use our account mapping functionality to assemble those connections. This is one for the HubSpot customer success team. @TitiCuisset , do you know anyone in the CS team who can perhaps help Doug with his import challenge? 

[dougw03]

Hi Dan. FYI I am in touch with HubSpot CS already and they are looking into this issue. I was just wondering if you had found any workarounds. Thanks again

[HVogt]

Did you get a solution to the imports from CS that you can share?

[DianaGomez]

Hi @HVogt,

Thank you for your question. 

If I understood correctly, you would like to import parent and child companies. If so, it will involve a two-step process. The initial step entails importing your parent companies. This enables you to designate companies with domains and offers the option to export these companies with associated Company IDs.

Once you have successfully imported these parent companies and subsequently exported them to obtain the company IDs, you can proceed to craft the import file for your child companies. Alongside the properties you intend to import, an additional column named "Parent Company" needs to be included. For each child company, you will insert the corresponding parent company ID into this column. By doing this, upon importing the child companies, they will be linked to their respective parent companies, thereby allowing you to establish separate child companies under the same domain as the parent.

For more comprehensive guidance, I've located a community post that delves into greater detail: Import Parent Child Relationships for Companies and Contacts.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

Diana

[DianaGomez]

Hi @dougw03, hope you are doing well!

Thanks @Dan1 , for tagging Tiphaine, she is currently on vacations, so I will be happy to help.😊

Thanks @dougw03  for letting us know that you are in touch with HubSpot CS.

¡Happy holidays!

Best,

Diana

[AndrewLomas]

Thank you so much Dan

I'm a visual learner and this has helped me significantly with managing government agencies using the same single government domain name.

Keep up the great education pieces. This is why I love Hubspot communities.

[Dan1]

Hi @AndrewLomas , 

Thank you for taking the time to say this, it spurs us on 🙂 

Really pleased it has helped you. 

Kind regards, 

Dan Currin 

Co-Founder 

OrgChartHub 

GeoMapper 

OrgChartHub & GeoMapper named in the Top 30 HubSpot Apps 

[PontusLindgren]

Hey guys! Just found this article in the Knowledge Base where it's described how to exclude specific domains from automatic association: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/automatically-create-and-associate-companies-with-contacts

Hope this might help you!

[timfresen]

Hi Fridrik,

Another solution would be to simply modify the domain for the company. For example, I sell to companies that have multiple offices in different countries. Let's say I enter American Expres (aexp.com) to the CRM. I then name the Italy office italy.aexp.com and the US office us.aexp.com

Does this help?

[kevin_oboyle]

Hi all,

Not an ideal solution - but we need the flexibility to import AND update fields using a unique primary key.  The only key that Hubspot lets you use for this (based on what I know) is company domain name.    For the parent company, we populate the domain field with the actual wesbite domain.   For the child companies, we are using the primary key from our ERP system, and then adding '.com' to the end of it - then relating the companies in HS using the parent-child relationship functionality.

I'd be interested in feedback from the community on this work-around approach.

Thanks,

-Kevin   

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hello @Fridrik - welcome to the Community!

In answer to your question, I believe it is possible to create companies with the same domain but what you will want to make sure you do is disable automated contact association. 

Contacts and companies are associated based on a shared domain, so this will get tricky if you have multiple companies with the same domain. Check out how this process works and how you can disable it here. 

I'd reccommend testing adding two companies with the same domain, before doing any mass import. 

I'd also reccommend checking out the parent/child company feature. In HubSpot's CRM, you have the ability to associate two companies in a parent-child relationship. To add a parent or child company to an existing company record in the CRM check out this knowledge article. 

I hope the above is of help to you, let me know how you get on with your test!

[AdamLPW]

Sorry to resurrect this necro-thread, but this solution isn't ideal for me, and I was wondering if anyone in the community has any better ideas.  

Many of my customers are self-employed representatives of large networks and have "@xyz.com" email addresses.  I'd say these make up 5-10% of my overall customer-base, so I really don't want to be disabling automatic contact association.  

My recommendation would be to be able to opt individual domains out of automatic contact association, particularly domains with parent/child relationships associated with them.  

At the moment I frequently have prospective customers added to existing customers' records, etc., which is annoying and frustrating to unpick.  

[SKluge]

Same Issue here, any better solutions?  I have organizations that have 60+ locations with 20+ possible contacts at each one, all under the same domain structure.  I also have regional reps working with seperate offices so need the communications to be siloed. All the Parent/Child does is allow you to manually create a linked list of related companies.

[Fridrik]

Hi!

Thank you very much for the help.

I suppose it might be better in my situation to turn off the auto association.

I'll try and see how it works. After all, I'm only dealing with roughly a thousand or so contacts in total, and on average get a few new contacts every week, so even if I would have to connect contacts and companies manually it wouldn't be that much work. 

I saw the parent/child field, but figured it might still require a different domain. But I'll have a second look at it!

Thanks for the quick response.

Fridrik

[ron_kagan]

Rather than simply associating by domain, location by form filled city on creation of contact might help with specifying child acocunts that are meaningful but not identical to the parent