Keep the number of contacts within account limits

[mobedi]

Our customer has chosen the Hubspot Enterprise plan with a limit of 80,000 contacts. What they have asked us to do is to keep the number of customers within their plan limit so that they do not have to pay extra.

One way of doing this is via the API i.e. removing inactive contacts and if needed all the contacts that exceed the limit of the account. But this is considered as plan B since it demands programming, an available server and task scheduling.

Of course one can, through a workflow identify inactive contacts, add them to a static list and then manually delete them. But this also does not guarantee if we do not cross the limit.

I am wonderig how Hubspot manages crossing the contact limit and whether this is something we can handle via the GUI.

[Josh · Accepted solution]

There will not be an automatic way to delete these contacts.

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Contacts-Companies-Deals/Auto-delete-leads-with-our-company-domain-...

If they were billed quarterly or annually you have a bit more flexibility for contact tiers, so it makes manual removal a bit more forgivable. 

[MFrankJohnson · Accepted solution]

Q: [How to] Keep the number of contacts within account limits?

Short A: We use Databox dashboard reporting and set alerts (see example below).

Longer A: 

Setting up HubSpot smart lists to feed a dashboard (with alerts) like the one shown below has many advantages.

[Click Here For Live Sample With Links To Resources]

These little guys ...

-- Allow us to notify all parties who may have an impact on the number of contacts in our HS CRM (i.e., CMO, Super Admins, Admins, Support Desk, etc.) AND at different stages of urgency.

-- Allow us to set reminders (daily, weekly, monthly, etc) AND/OR set alerts based on actual number of contacts at any given point in time.

-- Expose our cients to the shear power of using dashboards that integrate with over 60 platforms (unlike HubSpot reporting which only shows data from where the HubSpot tracking code is installed).

-- Allow our clients to actually see things on mobile w/o having to squint or pan-right, pan-right, pan-right ...

Last client we set this up for currently saves >$1000 monthly on their HubSpot bill due to the removal of >70K 'dead' contacts -- and when we say dead we don't mean zombies. haha

[mobedi]

This looks like a neat dashboard tool.

But does it actually perform the delete, too?

[Josh]

Not at this time. There is nothing that I am aware of that will automatically delete contacts.

[Josh]

Hi @mobedi,

How is your client paying per their HubSpot contract? Annual, quarterly, monthly?

Side note...with GDPR around the corner, I could see some changes being made around the removal of stale contacts which might make this easier to accomplish (pure speculation).

[mobedi]

I am not exactly sure. But let us say they pay on a monthly basis.

Yes, it's very possible that GDPR will bring some useful limitations. But my question is focused on an available non-API solution.

[Josh · Accepted solution]

There will not be an automatic way to delete these contacts.

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Contacts-Companies-Deals/Auto-delete-leads-with-our-company-domain-...

If they were billed quarterly or annually you have a bit more flexibility for contact tiers, so it makes manual removal a bit more forgivable.