HubSpot Community - Stop automatic contact creation from email sending - Page 4

IgniteMarketing · ‎Apr 18, 2017

Hi guys

I'm using the Gmail integration and love all the features EXCEPT the one that automatically creates a new contact within HubSpot CRM everytime I send an email to anyone not yet in the CRM from my Gmail account.

Is there a way to switch off just this one feature without losing any of the other integrations. All I have tried so far is unticking the 'Log In CRM' check box in the email compser window.

Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Communitylearn · ‎Dec 13, 2019

I turned off Log and Track in my inbox as my HR related info kept turning up in Hubspot and Hubspot have not got an acceptable solution for this.

We have literally had emails about people being made redundant end up in Hubspot for other employees to see. I can't possibly have log and track on!

Even if you delete a contact from Hubspot when you realise there is a compromising email that has been recorded, and turn off log and track in gmail, if someone later opens the email you sent when you had log and track on, it will re-appear in Hubspot with the contact re-created!

So we have emails with titles abou redundancies, payrises etc pop up.

As a partial solution

If you go to Settings > Integrations > Email integrations > Log and track you can put in domains which should never be tracked.

I have in there my company's domain with an asterix eg *.domain.com so that emails between employees aren't tracked (yes really Hubspot, sales employees email each other about confidential things like Pay and personal issues!). Why isn't this set as on by default so that interactions between employees aren't tracked?

I also have the payroll company, lawyers etc in don't track and log. But the problem is you don't know who is going to email you or who you are going to email and you won't have disabled them here. The email will end up in Hubspot.

So even though I turned off log and track and said don't log and track the payroll company, the payroll company changed their email domain without me noticing, and so their emails started turning up in Hubspot again. And I have not had log and track on for a year!

It is completely unacceptable from a GDPR point of view, let alone employee confidential information about illness etc.

Email titles that can be seen by other employees in the Activity Feed are enough for a massive breach of confidential information.

SjoerdK · ‎Jan 16, 2020

Wow, we are testing various platforms to use as our CRM tool.

During testing, hubspot started to create contacts from incoming newsletter messages.

From the thread I understand there is no way to avoid this unless we cut tracking of emails.

This discussion raises a few red flags for my business.

1. GDPR concerns are not taken serious by Hubspot

2. Hubspot takes 2 years to resolve basic functionality requests like this one

3. Hubspot connects functionalities that seemingly have nothing to do with one another and forces you to either opt in or out of a group of connected functionalities.

Very happy to see this now, before we need to make our final decision.

Let's see how Zoho and Pipedrive score in this regard.

drewshape · ‎Feb 15, 2020

We've found the same issue and it shouldn't be too difficult to fix, really - so it's disappointing to see nothing has been done in 2 years.

I think users should have the option and decide wheather or not to create a new contact in the CRM.

mendelcohen · ‎Mar 29, 2020

Wow, you guys really just don't understand. It's so simple!!!

Read the following SLOWLY....We do not want emails being created into contacts. Meaning, when we get an email, it automatically creates a contact in the contact section. I don't know how to explain it in simpler terms. How do you guys not understand?

We all want this fixed! Everyone!

All solutions you stated do not provide a fix to this problem. I'm sure the worst developer out there can fix this in a heartbeat. You guys need to step up your game on this please.

I even receive marketing emails that become contacts. It's outragous!

Trealoar · ‎Mar 29, 2020

I agree!

There may be more to it, if on a paid subscription - the more contacts you have the higher the monthly bill..... makes sense to keep adding contacts right?

deanburell · ‎Apr 6, 2020

Easy fix, just give me the option. If the contact does not exist and logging and/or tracking is turned on, prompt me whether I want to add them as a contact, if I say yes, add them as a contact and continue logging and tracking... if I say no. dont do anything and move on.

If you want to get fancy, ask me if I want to block that email address from being added in the future, and then you already know the answer to the above question.

Muser · ‎Apr 7, 2020

I now understand why Hubspot doesn't add this feature: money! Hubspot charges for quantities of contacts in our database for their Marketing product, and so by automatically adding contacts to our CRMs, Hubspot is driving up our contact count so they can sell us more blocks of contacts. If they enable us to disable this feature, we'll have fewer contacts and they'll make less money. So, if anyone is wondering why such a simple feature that's highly demanded by customers hasn't been implemented, I think we have our answer.

DevonC · ‎Apr 12, 2020

@Muser I came here to say this. It's clear that enabling this simple feature would significantly reduce the number of contacts created and thus have a direct impact on Hubspot's revenue. It's easy to surmise that this is why they haven't done it.

Anyone from Hubspot care to reply?

MrsAugie · ‎May 14, 2020

I am BRAND new to HubSpot and was just trying to figure out how to connect my Outlook. We have only had our initial onboarding call. YIKES - reading these messages I don't want to connect my Outlook! Like someone mentioned above, as a small business, I use my business email for pretty much everything in my life. I actually DO want to have vendors and personal contacts in HubSpot but I definitely want to be able to to tell HubSpot whether or not to make a new contact. And I want to be able to indicate when making that a new contact, who (user permissions) is able to view that contact. It does seem like a pretty simple feature for a platform as robust as HubSpot.

NWilkinson · ‎May 19, 2020

Yep I'm only a few weeks into Hubspot but facing this and I'm a very small business. My suppliers or contacts I keep removing just pop up the next day after another email....sigh.

Agree with other comments about an "ignore" or "never add" feature. A must have.

The very fact that I'm here on this thread means I had to search for how to stop HS from doing this as it was getting very frustrating after only several contacts, I don't want to imagine having to do this over hundreds or thousands of contacts.

Millerd · ‎May 29, 2020

100% AGREE !!! When can we expect this to be fixed

tonydoylei2v · ‎Aug 7, 2020

And to make matters worse it keeps adding internal emails to staff as contacts. This is in danger of becoming a deal breaker for us. It smacks of an insidious attempt to drive revenue for hubspot's contact based pricing model.

OmairH · ‎Aug 15, 2020

I receive over 200 emails every day, 100+ are from companies marketing themselves (SPAM), 40 from services we use and 60 from customers. Every day by evening, our account is a mess from SPAM senders and service notification email addresses added as contact.

Simply providing a check button to add all email as contacts would work wonders with HS customers.

Millerd · ‎Aug 17, 2020

Ok so apparently there is a fix for this, if you login via chrome/gmail (may be similar for Outlook plugins) you will now see an option under settings that allows you to remove default associations per the screenshot below. Basically this appears to only require you to remove the "new company" association.

I have seen a drop off in new contacts but would appreciate the community input here.

OmairH · ‎Aug 17, 2020

Hi Millerd,

Apologies as I must've posted the comment in the wrong window. My question was for all incoming emails and not out-going emails.

Millerd · ‎Aug 17, 2020

I am outstanding a response from HS and this thread is intended for INBOUND messages, so you are in the right place. I await feedback from them still on this.

OmairH · ‎Aug 17, 2020

Hi Millerd, thank you.

The method you mentioned is for out-going emails. I want HS to stop creating new contacts for all incoming emails.

With over 100+ spam emails, its driving me nuts to delete contacts every few hours in order to keep the CRM clean.

Millerd · ‎Aug 17, 2020

Hi Omair, can you confirm this so I can go back to them

as I said I have been chasing this but have not had a response yet

OmairH · ‎Aug 17, 2020

Millerd, I can confirm what you mentioned works for out-going emails but not INBOUND emails.

berwynhoyt · ‎Aug 17, 2020

Hubspot has not addressed this for years and years. As a result we have never been able to use their gmail plugin.

It's probably only about 1 to 5 lines of code for them to fix it. Pseudo-code would look like this:

if dbase.lookup(email_address) is not None:
add_email_to_crm_log(email_address, email_content)

I'm really baffled as to why they won't fix it.

HubSpot Ideas

Stop automatic contact creation from email sending