Option to set email to private and not log it

[SebastianB]

Hi, it would be great to specify the privacy setting for emails or contacts that will be logged in the CRM. As some conversations & emails have to be confidential, it would be great to have a setting that tells Hubspot which emails to log and which not to log. For that, a "blacklist" of sorts could be a solution where all the companies & contacts are listed from which conversations should not be logged. Another way to do this would be to define a short code which can be added to the email in order to make it private, and thus not logged.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could implement a similar feature.

Thank you! 🙂

All the best,
Sebastian

[StephanyWHP]

It would be extremely helpful for our company if we had the option to opt specific email domains out from CRM logging. We utilize multiple programs internally which involve sending and receiving emails (Asana, ProofMe, etc.) and all of those get automatically logged in the CRM as leads. This makes it hard to effectively track email rates with the reporting tools since a certain percentage are not actually based on client outreach.

I know a workaround is to just remember to uncheck Log in CRM each time, but it would be much simpler to opt those domains out altogether.

Clearly this functionality exists in the software, as your own company's domain does not get logged and you can also opt certain domains out of automatic contact association. Hopefully this can be implemented in the future!

[samuelb]

HubSpot support have said they do not plan to develop this feature for "quite some time" as they believe the functionality is working as it should. I have asked many times.

[Alexaustin]

I agree, I'd like to be able to automatically select addresses which are the permanently excluded from logging to my contacts - such as personal friends or non-work related emails.

Thanks,

Alex.

[DougAlder]

Absolutely need this.  We use Hubspot to manage multiple companies and we need confidential emails sent from one domain to another domain to absoilutely not be logged or tracked - the the Sales extension 'Log in CRM'  tool function is at the individual level and can not be set globally by a super admin, but even that would not be sufficient - certain executives, for very valid reasons, do not want any of their email logged or tracked no matter who they send it to. 

[jveler_ecrs]

This excerpted from a discussion on this topic:

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Gmail-Sales-Extension/Stop-contacts-being-added-automatically-after...

This is an option that could be added to the Sales settings page where you can retrieve the logging email address used by HubSpot for your particular hub. Why not just have a checkbox that says "create new contacts when they do not exist"? It would be a simple user interface addition AND the logic code in the logging process should be as simple as "if the checkbox is unchecked, then skip the code that adds the contact". Similarly, the code could be added on an individual email basis where you choose to log it or not. 

Is there a specific reason why we do not want to just uncheck the Log in CRM box on an email to prevent these contacts from being created? Yes, many:

a) we do not always remember to uncheck the logging / tracking boxes with every email and by default the behavior to turn it on and turn it off with each email sent is very cumbersome.

b) a lot of emails we send go to a "contact" we have in hubspot for a company which we DO want to log. However, we may need to CC vendors or support personal in that same email. Those additional CCs do not need to be put in there at all and the option would allow them to be skipped. 

There are many other situations I can think of where this is the case. My last post in the community thread details further.

Please add this to your list of planned enhancements to the Hubspot platform

[seanifactory]

I need this and am disappointed we cant get it. It needs to be a feature that is added. 

Its seems very easy to me. Just like we can register IP's; we should be able to register either domains, or unique email addresses that will never be tracked or created in our contacts. 

[drose]

The ability to "blacklist" certain email domains to prevent the system from automatically creating contacts in the CRM is an absolute MUST HAVE right now for our business. We constantly email several contacts and companies that should not be logged and tracked as leads. It's a huge frustration for us with Hubspot's CRM.

This seams like a relatively easy fix from a software perspecitve. I hope adding this feature is a priority.

[BigeMe]

CRITICAL control...!!

[Elmergringo]

The idea of a "blacklist" to help our growing business manage unqualified leads/contacts is a no-brainer. Please allocate the resources to this task so we can continue to grow our business and manage our database with minimal headaches!

[amandabrunish]

This is a major problem, causing a lot of extra work in both our CRM and HubSpot in an attempt to clean up.  We simply want to be able to log emails in HubSpot but NOT have any individuals CCed on the actual email automatically be created into a Contact.  Blocking domains is not enough when you are dealing with thousands of domains.  

This seems to have been an ongoing request from users for sometime.  Could someone at HubSpot at least comment as to whether there are plans to address this?

Thank you for your consideration!

[celebiary1]

Much needed feature.   for a variety of reason this feature is a no brainer necessity

[cgonz]

I agree with the others. I ran into this issue today. We routinely CC our colleagues on emails to leads and constantly having to delete the extra contacts created. Hope you implement this soon.

[leadstarterlabs]

I join others here in requesting that this critical feature be added. In a separate forum chain, I think jveler_ecrs did an amazing job quantifying the negative impact of having to manually uncheck the track and/or log buttons on every email:

30 people x 15 clicks per day (conservatively) x 2 seconds per click = 15 minutes of lost time per day, 1.25 hours per week, or 62.5 hours per year. 62.5 x an average $60K salary = a cost of $1,875 / yr. If 100 companies have this same undesired behavior, pay their sales reps, has the same size team, then you're talking about adding $187,500 of combined, unnecessary labor cost per year. In addition that lost time could be used for inbound training and/or additional prospecting.

In addition to the labor cost from conservative time estimates, I feel it is a way for HubSpot to quickly inflate (unnecessariy and unwanted) our number of contacts in our account forcing us to go over our contact limit and pay for additional contact allotments.

If the same 100 companies have this issue and over the course of one year adds 1,000 contacts to each of their accounts at $10/mo/1000 for Hubspot overages, then Hubspot just made $12,000 additional revenue because they won't provide an option that a base of customers desire.

[junerose]

Agreed this is a big problem. We have a need to blacklist domains - it's not an option not to. For two reasons: 1. To prevent vendors and other non-sales/customer contacts from going to the CRM.  2) To restrict certain IPs and known corporate domains from receiving email or ads or starting a new trial of our software (authentication at the time of landing page form submission). 

Here is the workaround we are using with Zapier for the 1st example of catching/removing contacts created that match a domain from the Blacklist.   The second example is a bit more involved, happy to share via PM though.

Apps involved:

Hubspot CRM

Google sheet with list of blacklisted domains

Formatter by Zapier

Webhooks by Zapier (Hubspot Email API- PUT)

Webhooks by Zapier (Hubspot Contacts API- PUT)

Zap Flow:

Step 1: Trigger:  New contact created in Hubspot CRM

Step 2: Action: Formatter by Zapier - Transform: Split Text.  Input: email. Separator: @.  Segment Index: Second

(this creates the domain value for lookup purposes)

Step 3: Action: Google Sheets look up spreadsheet row: Spreadsheet: Blacklist. Worksheet: domain. Lookup column: domain. Lookup value: Formatter - domain

Flow only continues if successful match.

Step 4: Action: WebHooks by Zapier: PUT

This unsubscribes the contact ID of the contact (select from the Trigger step) from all email in Hubspot.

JSON code here: Hubspot Email API:  update_status

Example PUT URL:
https://api.hubapi.com/email/public/v1/subscriptions/example@domain.com

Example PUT data for unsubscribing an email address from all email:
{
    "unsubscribeFromAll": true
}

Example PUT data for unsubscribing from specific email types:
{
    "subscriptionStatuses": [
        {
            "id": 7, "subscribed": false
        }
    ]
}


On success, returns a 200 response with this JSON:
{
    "status": "ok"
}

Step 5: Action: Webhooks by Zapier: PUT

This deletes the contact ID of the contact (select from the Trigger step) from Hubspot.

JSON code here: Hubspot Contacts API:  delete_contact

Example DELETE URL:
https://api.hubapi.com/contacts/v1/contact/vid/61571?hapikey=demo

Example JSON output:
{
  "vid": 61571,
  "deleted": true,
  "reason": "OK"
}
   

[Kressie]

Please add this feature ASAP! Realized we needed to prevent contacts from a certain domain from being added and the only answer is "uncheck the box". There really needs to be a better way to do this. 😞

[Karena]

Agreed, this would be valuable. 

[madhavaji]

So, there's a blacklist in HubSpot for this. It's in Settings->Sales->Log Email in CRM.

Doesn't that cover it?

[Alexaustin]

Hi Madhavaji,

It works well enough if you are emailing directly but I found that when you do a round robin type email and a blacklisted address responds it is saved in hubspot anyway.

Alex.

[madhavaji]

Interesting, thanks @Alexaustin,

Will test this out thoroughly and report back.

[mpike]

I don't know if anyone has let you know - but this does exist now in the Sales Plug-In (althought it needs some improved functionality).

If you are in Hubspot and you go to your settings within the Plug-In, there is now a place to enter addresses/domains that you want to exclude from syncing/tracking.

IMPROVEMENT request for Hubspot - I'd love it if there was a way to exclude domains and have it automatically applied to all the users of the plug-in. For example - I would like to exclude our external IT and our insurance contacts (I know I can't minutely exclude every single little thing - but this would help).