Making contacts private

[AAyers88]

It's crazy to me that Hubspot doesn't have the option to make a contact or deal private. Hubspot has provided about four different workaround solutions but nothing that actually accomplishes this. With enterprise you can make certain properties private, but that doesn't account for confidential notes on a contact or deal record. 

The current and best workaround appears to be to restructure my entire organization so that only certain teams have certain access to certain contacts and then make the contact owner a certain individual. This doesn't really work as a solution since certain individuals are on more than one team. 

Hubspot, PLEASE PLEASE allow us to make objects private to certain teams instead of having to restructure our entire permissions set. 

[Setherson7]

I agree. The ability to grant access to certain contacts based on the "contact owner" is helpful, but doesn't satisfy the need for private conversations depending on the user and contact. There are many contacts that we want all users to see and communicate with, but in some occasions, need the ability for one user to have private conversations. 

[Kristiina]

@AAyers88 and @Setherson7 please upvote this idea, as it has more upvotes and is identical to this request 🙂 

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Mark-contacts-companies-deals-as-private-to-restrict-...

[Scoobs]

AAyers88, thank you for bringing this up. As a business owner, I often deal with high-level business communications that aren't relevant for the entire team. The ability to store these details within a HubSpot contact record would be valuable for administrative purposes, but it's essential that they remain confidential to a select audience. Additionally, I'd highly appreciate the implementation of a "Private Contacts" feature, enabling users to designate specific contacts as private.

Here's how it could work:

1. User Privileges: Administrative users can mark a contact as "private" within the contact record.
2. Access Control: Once marked as private, only users explicitly assigned or granted permission can view these contacts.
3. Transparency: Other team members would see a clear indicator that the contact is private without access to its details, preserving transparency about the contact's existence.

Here are some benefits:

1. Enhanced privacy for sensitive information.
2. Maintained transparency where needed.
3. Improved adaptability of HubSpot for various business needs.

This feature would make HubSpot an even more versatile solution for businesses while addressing the need for confidentiality and transparency.

[HCartledge]

Seconding this. We want to use Hubspot CRM to track confidential things like investor relationships. Obviously we don't want all comms & notes on those records to be accessible to everyone.

CRM is so useful and has some much benefit to keep track of relationships that work in a similar way to closing a deal e.g. closing fundraising, closing new partnership opportunities etc. 

[NVakulenko]

+1

[MDAVIS70]

+ Another!

[GSnow7]

We need this.... urgently.

Hubspot, where is this on the development pipeline?

[stuart_smith]

We need this too

[Daseean]

Yeah this is insane.

I have staff members reading confidential emails to my therapist... this is not ok.

[DBuehrig]

I have no idea why this is not a feature in HubSpot - for such an expensive system this should come out of the box. I used ACT CRM 20 years ago  and this was a basic feature. How can this be that this in not available in HubSpot?????

[GBurrow]

Still not available in May, 2025

[Tunch]

How does this not exist? This seems like the simplest feature with so much value. 

[GBurrow]

Needing this feature as well

[sknoppow]

Please, please, please make this a feature. I had a complicated exchange with Hubspot support explaining how to restructure my entire CRM to assign every one of my contacts that are NOT private to another member of my team so that the ones I own can be private. Really? Then the only contacts I "own" are the ones that are confidential. That is a ridiculous workaround for a straightforward issue.

[LK14]

This feature was first requested on this forum over 3 years ago, and I am surprised it has not been implemented yet.  

We need specific contacts to remain confidential, including emails sent, meeting notes. related tasks, etc. 

After trying a number of workarounds (we went so far as to set up a silo'ed team member to own the confidential contact andf a couple of workflows that ensured privacy was maintained), we discovered that as soon as anyone on any team had any activity/task/email to the confidential contact, then it became visible to everyone on their team as well.

After a number of brainstorming sessions with tech support, it seems we are left with no chouce but to delete these  confidential contacts from the system entirely, and set up a rule to keep the system from logging emails/call/etc. 

That is really a shame.