Recently, email preview links were changed to only be visible with a login. I would like to request a solution that brings this back. I see now that the change was made for security purposes and I recognize that I don't fully understand the use case in which these links are problematic but maybe there is a solution that could work.
Use case:
We use preview links extensively internally to get feedback from people across our org on emails that are being sent out. The biggest benefit is that I can make changes in hubspot and they can refresh to immediately see those edits.
Options:
* make preview links temporary so they can be used for short periods of time for editing.
* make the preview link optionally public in our hubspot settings
* provide a public preview that is watermarked or otherwise notes that it is a preview
Objection 1 - sending email previews instead:
Sending email previews is not ideal as some people in the org are visual editors and prefer to see changes before making more - which ends up meaning a big back and forth for me - make changes, send preview, make changes, send preview, "can we go back to the version from email 4?", find email four and change back, etc. The process is much more streamlined and real time when I have links available.
Objection 2 - give everyone hubspot access:
While not ideal, it is possible to set everyone up in hubspot and set up permissions so they ideally can't poke anything in our hubspot instance other than viewing that link BUT this becomes problematic when we work with partners and promote shared webinars. Suddenly we need to consider giving people ourside our org access to our hubspot and this is really not a solution that makes sense for us.
Objection 3 - Screenshots:
I can't capture a whole email in a single screenshot.
The use case for this feature is to be able to share with individuals outside our organization (non-HubSpot Users). We are partnering with an agency on an email campaign that will be co-branded and we need to be able to share a preview/proof with them for approval.
Sure we can send ourselves the preview email and then forward that email to these people. But have you ever forwarded a HubSpot preview email? The formatting gets JACKED UP! I see this EVERY time my boss replies to one of these preview emails. If I forward the email to our partner, how are they to know that the email client made some modifications to the formatting?
Please bring back the public preview - I actually cannot believe there are so many people asking and radio silence on HubSpot's end. I get that HubSpot believes this to be more secure, but is that little bit of security worth the ability to use the preview option for literally anything useful? Because it is no longer useful - I cannot send to anyone outside of my immediate team, and heavens forbid I need a team member to let another company preview the emails they are working with us on. It's true, what's said above - forwarding a HubSpot test email is terrible - at least fix this if you're going to take away our sharing links.
Let me give an example: at present, my team is working toward an event. We are partnering with someone and they wish to review our six emails that we are planning on sending. Am I genuinely now expected to send them six test emails? Before I could send a single email with six links in it, not six test emails. Now in order to have these approved I will need to find a way to screenshot and stitch these together so I can send out for mutual approval.
This topic has been active for almost 2 years. I need this back. We all need this back. Please listen to your users.
The idea that a login has to be provided to everyone who may need to view an email or landing page for approval is blind to how these things actually happen in reality. A corporate communication is not reviewed by one person, but by various stakeholders that may vary depending on the content of that particular comms.
Hubspot is almost insisting we change platform or at least mix platforms to supplement its own failings. To date, I still haven't been told what risks we're being protected from and if they exist, WHY it took so long for them to be recognised... presumably we were all at risk for all that time the public previews did work!
@Kierstin That's true, but in my user case I know ONE of the clients that I send reviews to, who can then show it to any number of people depending on the email content etc., all of whom are not known to me and may only have to review that one link... the fluidity of process is what's lost to this security issue being addressed.
Incidentally, we could share links for a long time until it was stopped, and the reason was 'security'. So... what were we losing in terms of security for the months / years previously? What hole has been plugged up with this, and why is it not possible for us to simply have an 'opt out' so we can accept a given risk?
This is a huge problem. I have seen HubSpot reps recommend that we forward emails to managers for approval, but forwarding HTML email often injects issues with formatting and is not a workable solution. Please reinstate publicly shareable preview links that do not require a HubSpot login, as this is really the only way to solve this problem. Mailchimp is significantly less powerful than HubSpot, but they have publicly shareable preview links easily accessible in their system. Many other mass email systems do as well. HubSpot is typically the leader in finding ways to surprise and delight its users, and I'm sure that you can find a way to do it in this area as well.
YES! YES! This would be super helpful with a ton of marketing content. Controls/settings for previews would be very much desired. I would like to extend this idea to the blogs tool as well.
Honestly astonished that it's been almost 3 years with no response from HubSpot on this. Public preview links are essential in any CMS. Currently for our QA tester to run templates through our cross browser testing tools we have to first publish a page using the template when it'd be far less work if they could just test using the template preview.
100% need this feature to allow feedback across internal and external teams on key emails and awareness. Having to add users to allow them only to view a preview of an email with the new HubSpot seat model is not feasible and can add additional security concerns when we want individual people to only be able to access one single email to preview vs. the whole system.
