Here’s how to truly master your HubSpot contacts and keep your budget happy: understanding the ins and outs of non-marketing contacts. It’s a must for many businesses, especially when you’re trying to grow without breaking the bank. Essentially, a non-marketing contact in HubSpot is someone you store in your CRM, but you’re not actively sending them marketing emails or including them in automated promotional campaigns. Think of them as part of your broader network—maybe a past customer, a partner, or just someone who’s unsubscribed—who you still need to keep tabs on for sales, customer service, or other one-to-one communications, but without incurring the marketing costs. The fantastic news is that, for paid HubSpot plans, these non-marketing contacts generally don’t count towards your billable contact tier. This means you can often keep a huge number of them in your database for free, letting you focus your marketing spend only on the contacts who are truly engaged and ready for your campaigns. However, there’s a bit of a tricky spot with the free HubSpot CRM, which we’ll definitely unpack, as the limits for non-marketing contacts might not be as expansive as you’d think for that specific tier. Let’s get into it and make sure you’re using HubSpot effectively and efficiently, saving money and boosting your outreach where it counts!

Alright, let’s break down what these “non-marketing contacts” are all about in HubSpot, because it’s a pretty fundamental concept for managing your CRM smart. At its core, a non-marketing contact is any person in your HubSpot database who you’ve decided not to engage with using HubSpot’s specific marketing tools.

Think of it this way: your HubSpot CRM is like a big rolodex if you remember those!. It holds all the people you interact with in your business. Within that rolodex, you’ve got two main groups:

1. Marketing Contacts: These are your active players. They’re the ones you’re sending your newsletters to, targeting with ad campaigns, putting into lead nurturing workflows, and generally trying to convert or re-engage with through automated, mass communication. They are the contacts that HubSpot’s Marketing Hub charges you for.
2. Non-Marketing Contacts: These are the folks you still need to keep records of, but you’re not hitting them with your marketing campaigns. This could be a wide variety of people:
   • Past Customers who’ve finished a project or stopped subscribing, but you might want to reach out to them personally later for renewals or new offerings.
   • Unsubscribed Leads: People who’ve opted out of your marketing emails. You absolutely should make them non-marketing to respect their preferences and comply with regulations.
   • Partners or Vendors: Business connections you need to store information about for operational or collaborative reasons.
   • Internal Team Members: Your own staff whose contact info might be in the CRM for testing or other internal processes.
   • Inactive or Unengaged Leads: Contacts who haven’t opened an email or visited your site in a long time and aren’t responding to re-engagement efforts. Instead of deleting them and losing historical data, you can move them to non-marketing.

The key characteristic that makes a contact “non-marketing” is that they do not receive marketing emails or automated promotional messages from HubSpot. This is super important because it directly impacts your HubSpot bill.

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The Core Difference: How They Impact Your Wallet

Here’s the big takeaway: non-marketing contacts do not count towards your HubSpot marketing contact limit, meaning you aren’t charged for them within your Marketing Hub subscription. Your HubSpot Marketing Hub plan’s cost is based directly on the number of marketing contacts you have. So, if you have 10,000 contacts in your CRM but only 2,000 of them are marked as “marketing contacts,” you only pay for those 2,000. The other 8,000 non-marketing contacts are essentially free to store.

This distinction allows you to have a comprehensive database without unnecessary marketing expenses. You can still use HubSpot’s CRM features like tracking their activities, logging calls, managing deals, or engaging in one-to-one sales or service conversations with these non-marketing contacts. You just can’t use the mass marketing tools on them.

Why Non-Marketing Contacts Are Your Budget’s Best Friend

You might be thinking, “Why bother categorizing them? Can’t I just delete contacts I don’t market to?” Well, you could, but you’d be missing out on some serious benefits. Properly managing your non-marketing contacts isn’t just about saving money. it’s about making your entire operation more efficient, compliant, and ultimately, more effective.

1. Drastically Reduced Marketing Costs

This is probably the most compelling reason for most businesses. HubSpot’s pricing structure is directly tied to the number of marketing contacts in your account. The more marketing contacts you have, the higher your monthly or annual subscription cost. By accurately classifying contacts you don’t actively market to as non-marketing, you prevent them from contributing to your billable contact tier. What Exactly Are “Non-HubSpot Forms”?

Imagine this: you’ve got a database of 50,000 contacts, but only 10,000 are truly engaged and receiving your marketing emails. If you paid for all 50,000 as marketing contacts, your bill would be significantly higher than if you only paid for the 10,000 active ones. This optimization means you’re only paying for the marketing reach you actually use, freeing up budget for other crucial areas of your business.

2. Improved Email Deliverability and Engagement Rates

Sending emails to unengaged or inactive contacts can seriously harm your email sender reputation. Internet service providers ISPs look at things like open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates. If your emails are consistently going to people who don’t open them, or worse, bouncing back, ISPs might start flagging your emails as spam. This isn’t just bad for those specific emails. it can affect the deliverability of all your emails, even to your most engaged audience.

By moving inactive or unsubscribed contacts to non-marketing status, you clean up your active marketing lists. This means your engagement metrics opens, clicks for your marketing contacts will naturally look much healthier, signaling to ISPs that your content is valuable. The result? Better deliverability and a higher chance your marketing emails actually land in the inbox of those who want to see them.

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3. Enhanced Data Hygiene and CRM Organization

A clean CRM is a powerful CRM. When your database is full of outdated, duplicate, or irrelevant contacts, it clutters your data, making it harder to segment, analyze, and make informed decisions. Identifying non-marketing contacts is a crucial step in maintaining data accuracy. It helps you remove noise from your data, ensuring your reports and analytics are based on relevant interactions.

This also makes it easier for your sales and service teams. They won’t accidentally try to sell to someone who’s already a customer or send a promotional email to someone who’s specifically opted out. It creates a more organized and useful “single source of truth” for all your contact data.

4. Better Compliance with Data Privacy Regulations

Data privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA emphasize the importance of consent and giving individuals control over how their data is used, especially for marketing. If someone has unsubscribed from your emails, keeping them as a marketing contact even if you don’t send them anything can be a compliance risk. Designating them as non-marketing helps you adhere to these regulations by clearly indicating that they are not part of your active marketing outreach. It ensures you’re only targeting opted-in contacts with marketing materials.

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5. Retaining Valuable Historical Data

Sometimes, a contact isn’t interested in marketing right now, but they might be valuable in other ways. Maybe they were a lead five years ago, or they interacted with your sales team for a while. Deleting them means losing all that historical data—their past interactions, notes from sales calls, etc..

By setting them as non-marketing, you retain this valuable context within your CRM. This allows your sales or service teams to access their full history if they need to reach out directly for a non-marketing reason like a personal follow-up, a customer service query, or a re-engagement effort with a different approach.

The HubSpot Contact Limits Breakdown: What You Need to Know

Understanding HubSpot’s contact limits, especially for marketing contacts, is essential because it directly dictates your subscription costs. HubSpot operates on a tiered pricing model, meaning your plan’s price largely depends on the number of marketing contacts you have.

Marketing Hub Tiers and Contact Allowances

When you sign up for a HubSpot Marketing Hub plan, you choose a “contact tier” which sets the limit on how many marketing contacts you can actively engage with each month. Here’s a general breakdown of what to expect, though exact figures can vary slightly based on specific deals or regional pricing: N8n HubSpot Scopes: Your Ultimate Guide to Powerful Automation

• Marketing Hub Starter: Typically includes 1,000 marketing contacts. Additional contacts are often sold in increments of 1,000.
• Marketing Hub Professional: Usually starts with 2,000 marketing contacts. Additional contacts are sold in bundles, often in increments of 5,000.
• Marketing Hub Enterprise: Generally includes 10,000 marketing contacts. Additional contacts are sold in larger bundles, like 10,000.

Key takeaway: If you exceed your current marketing contact tier limit, HubSpot will automatically upgrade you to the next tier, and you’ll be billed for that higher tier. This can happen unexpectedly if you’re not carefully monitoring your contacts, leading to a bump in your subscription cost that can’t be downgraded until your next renewal date. It’s a “gotcha” many businesses fall into!

What About Overall CRM Contacts?

Beyond marketing contacts, HubSpot’s CRM itself is quite generous. For all contacts, including both marketing and non-marketing, the HubSpot CRM especially the free version allows you to store a massive number. Historically, this has been stated as up to 1,000,000 contacts for free users. This generous limit refers to the total number of records you can have in your CRM database, which is fantastic for comprehensive data management.

However, as we’ll discuss next, there’s a specific nuance when it comes to non-marketing contacts on the free tier that needs careful consideration.

The Free CRM Dilemma: Non-Marketing Contact Limits

Here’s where things can get a little confusing, and it’s a point of recent discussion in the HubSpot community. While many sources including HubSpot itself historically state that the free HubSpot CRM allows up to 1,000,000 contacts, implicitly meaning you can store a vast number of non-marketing contacts without charge, there’s a newer sentiment that suggests a change, particularly for new free CRM users. Supercharge Your Workflow: The Ultimate Guide to Notion HubSpot Integration

Some recent discussions, like those on Reddit from early 2025, indicate that the free version of HubSpot CRM might now limit you to storing only 1,000 non-marketing contacts. This would be a significant shift from the historical 1,000,000 “overall contacts” allowance. It implies that while you might still be able to store a large number of records, only 1,000 of them can be designated as non-marketing contacts in the active sense if you’re on the free plan.

What does this mean for you?

• Historical vs. Current: It seems there might be different rules depending on when your HubSpot account was created. Older accounts might still enjoy the larger overall contact storage without explicit non-marketing contact limits on the free tier.
• “Overall Contacts” vs. “Non-Marketing Contacts”: The distinction here is crucial. The 1,000,000 contacts limit likely refers to the total number of records you can simply have in your free CRM database. However, if the new 1,000 limit for non-marketing contacts is true for current free users, it means you can only actively classify that many as non-marketing to specifically avoid marketing costs even if you’re not using paid Marketing Hub features, this could impact other free marketing tools.
• Why the change? It’s common for platforms to adjust their free offerings over time to encourage upgrades. Limiting the number of designated non-marketing contacts for free users would push businesses with larger databases toward paid Marketing Hub plans more quickly.

My honest advice here? If you’re using the free HubSpot CRM and are approaching or exceeding 1,000 contacts, definitely check your specific account’s “Usage & Limits” section within HubSpot. Look for explicit statements about non-marketing contact limits. Because these policies can evolve, direct confirmation from your HubSpot account or their official documentation is always the most reliable source for the most up-to-date information for your specific account.

For paid Marketing Hub users, the good news remains: the non-marketing contacts up to 1,000,000 generally still don’t count towards your billable marketing contact tier. This primarily impacts those relying solely on the free CRM with a large number of non-marketing records they wish to actively manage or designate.

How to Designate Contacts as Non-Marketing

you’re on board with the benefits of non-marketing contacts. Now, how do you actually make the magic happen in HubSpot? You’ve got a couple of ways to do this, ranging from manual updates to slick automation. Understanding Non-HubSpot Forms: Your Guide to Smarter Data Capture

Manually Setting Contacts as Non-Marketing

This is the most straightforward method, great for individual contacts or smaller batches.

On the Contacts Index Page:

1. Navigate to Contacts: In your HubSpot account, head over to CRM > Contacts in the main navigation.
2. Select Your Contacts: Use the checkboxes next to the contacts you want to change. You can select one, a few, or use filters to create a view and then select multiple contacts.
3. Click “More” or “Actions”: At the top of the table, you’ll see a More dropdown menu or sometimes Actions depending on your HubSpot version.
4. Choose “Set as non-marketing contacts”: Select this option from the dropdown.
5. Confirm: A dialogue box will pop up asking you to confirm. Click Set as non-marketing.

On an Individual Contact Record:

1. Go to a Contact Record: Click on any contact’s name to open their individual record.
2. Locate the “Marketing contact” property: In the “About” section, or by searching for properties, you’ll find the “Marketing contact” property.
3. Edit the property: Click the pencil icon next to it and change the value to “Non-marketing contact”.
4. Save: Don’t forget to save your changes!

Important Note on Update Dates: When you change a contact’s status from marketing to non-marketing, it doesn’t always happen instantly. HubSpot typically processes these changes on a specific “update date,” which is often the first day of the month or your subscription renewal date. So, if a contact was marked as marketing this month, changing them to non-marketing might only take effect at the start of the next billing cycle. This is crucial for budget planning!

Automating Non-Marketing Contact Updates Professional and Enterprise only

For larger databases, manually updating contacts is just not sustainable. This is where HubSpot’s workflows become your best friend you’ll need a Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise plan for full workflow capabilities. Harnessing the Power of NPS HubSpot: Your Ultimate Guide to Customer Loyalty

Workflows allow you to automatically change contact statuses based on certain triggers. Here are some common and effective ways to set this up:

1. Unsubscribed Contacts: This is a no-brainer. If someone unsubscribes from your marketing emails, you should automatically make them a non-marketing contact.

   • Workflow Trigger: Contact unsubscribed from all emails.
   • Workflow Action: Set marketing contact status to Set as non-marketing.

2. Repeated Bounces: If a contact’s email repeatedly bounces, it means the email address is invalid. There’s no point in trying to market to them.

   • Workflow Trigger: Marketing email hard bounce or number of bounces is greater than X.

3. Inactivity/Lack of Engagement: This is a powerful one for keeping your lists lean. You can define what “inactive” means for your business e.g., no email opens, no website visits, no form submissions in the last 90 or 120 days.

   • Workflow Trigger: Contact property: Last activity date is more than 90 days ago AND Marketing email open count is 0 or similar engagement metrics. You might even send a re-engagement email first, and if they still don’t engage, then change their status.

4. New Imports Sales Leads: If your sales team imports cold leads that haven’t opted into marketing, it’s a good practice to set them as non-marketing by default. Understanding the HubSpot Marketplace: What’s the Big Deal?

   • Workflow Trigger: Contact property: Original source is Offline sources or specific import list AND Marketing contact status is Known/Marketing contact.

Setting up these workflows helps you maintain a clean and cost-efficient database without constant manual intervention.

Best Practices for Smart Contact Management in HubSpot

Beyond just knowing how to flip a switch, truly smart contact management in HubSpot involves ongoing effort and a strategic mindset. You want to make sure your database is always working for you, not against your budget.

1. Regularly Audit and Clean Your Contact Lists

This is probably the single most important best practice. Your database isn’t a static entity. it’s constantly changing. People change jobs, email addresses become inactive, or they simply lose interest. A cluttered list costs you money and hinders your marketing effectiveness.

• Schedule Regular Reviews: Set a recurring calendar reminder, perhaps quarterly or monthly, to review your marketing contacts.
• Look for Stale Data: Identify contacts with outdated information, duplicate records HubSpot has tools to help merge these, or missing key fields.
• Focus on Engagement Metrics: Use HubSpot’s analytics to find contacts with consistently low engagement no email opens, no clicks, no website visits over a long period. These are prime candidates for becoming non-marketing contacts.

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2. Implement Clear Contact Classification Criteria

Don’t just randomly decide who’s marketing and who isn’t. Establish clear guidelines for your team. What defines a “marketing contact” in your business? What triggers a change to “non-marketing” status?

• Define Engagement Thresholds: How many emails can someone ignore before they’re considered unengaged? What constitutes “active” website behavior?
• Align Sales and Marketing: Make sure both your sales and marketing teams understand these criteria and the importance of classifying contacts correctly. Sales teams, for example, might add cold leads for outreach that should initially be non-marketing.
• Use Lifecycle Stages: Integrate contact status with your HubSpot lifecycle stages. For example, a “Lead” might be a marketing contact, but an “Evangelist” a past customer might be non-marketing if you’re not actively marketing new products to them, only engaging through service channels.

3. Leverage Smart Segmentation

HubSpot’s list segmentation tools are incredibly powerful. Use them to create dynamic lists that automatically identify contacts based on their behavior, demographics, or lifecycle stage.

• Active Engaged List: Create a list of contacts who have opened an email or visited your site in the last 30-60 days. This helps you focus your marketing efforts.
• Re-engagement List: Identify contacts who show some activity but aren’t fully engaged. You can run specific campaigns to try and re-ignite their interest before moving them to non-marketing status.
• Unsubscribed/Bounced List: Keep active lists of unsubscribed or bounced contacts, so you can easily manage their non-marketing status via workflows.

4. Monitor Your Usage & Limits Page Regularly

Seriously, make this a habit. Your HubSpot “Account & Billing” section has a “Usage & Limits” tab that shows you a daily updated count of your marketing contacts, your current contact tier, and your next update date. Marketing hub enterprise hubspot

• Daily or Weekly Checks: Especially if you have active lead generation, keep an eye on this. You’ll see how close you are to your limit.
• Understand Your Update Date: This is when HubSpot reviews your marketing contact count for billing. Any changes to contact status from marketing to non-marketing before this date can affect your upcoming bill.

5. Be Strategic When Changing Status

• Marketing to Non-Marketing: You can change a contact to non-marketing at any time, but remember that the billing impact usually only takes effect at your next update date. Plan these changes strategically, ideally before your billing cycle renews, to see the cost savings.
• Non-Marketing to Marketing: If a non-marketing contact suddenly becomes engaged e.g., fills out a form, requests a demo, you can absolutely change them back to a marketing contact to include them in your campaigns. Just be mindful of your overall marketing contact limit when doing so.

By integrating these practices into your routine, you’ll not only keep your HubSpot costs in check but also ensure your marketing efforts are targeted, compliant, and genuinely effective.

Avoiding the Automatic Upgrade Trap

One of the biggest “gotchas” in HubSpot pricing is the automatic upgrade. If your number of marketing contacts exceeds the limit of your current plan tier, HubSpot will often automatically bump you up to the next tier. And here’s the kicker: once you’re upgraded, you’ll be billed at that higher tier, and you generally can’t downgrade your contact tier until your next annual renewal date, even if your contact count drops below the threshold later. This can lead to unexpected and significant increases in your subscription costs.

So, how do you avoid this trap and keep control of your budget?

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Proactive Monitoring and Management

The most effective strategy is proactive monitoring and management. Don’t wait for HubSpot to send you an upgrade notification.

1. Understand Your Current Limits: Know exactly how many marketing contacts your current plan allows.
2. Track Your Marketing Contact Count Daily/Weekly: As mentioned earlier, regularly check the “Usage & Limits” section in your HubSpot account. HubSpot provides a clear graph showing your marketing contacts versus your limit.
3. Know Your “Update Date”: This is the crucial date when HubSpot assesses your marketing contact count for billing. Mark it on your calendar! Any contacts you set to non-marketing before this date will count towards the lower tier for your next billing period.
4. Set Up Internal Alerts: If possible, set up internal alerts or reminders within your team to check the contact count as you approach your update date.

Strategic Contact Cleanup Before the Update Date

If you see your marketing contact count creeping close to your limit, or if it has exceeded it mid-month, you need to act strategically before your next update date to prevent being locked into a higher tier.

• Prioritize Inactive Contacts: Use your engagement data to identify contacts who haven’t engaged in a long time e.g., 90-180 days. These are prime candidates for changing to non-marketing status.
• Automate When Possible: Leverage workflows if you have a Professional or Enterprise Marketing Hub plan to automatically set unengaged, unsubscribed, or bounced contacts as non-marketing. This continuously cleans your list in the background.
• Review Recent Imports: Sometimes, large imports can unexpectedly push you over the limit. Double-check any recently imported lists to ensure contacts are correctly classified.

By being vigilant and taking action before your HubSpot “update date,” you can maintain greater control over your marketing contact tier and avoid those surprising, higher bills. It’s all about being intentional with who you’re actively marketing to and making sure your HubSpot account reflects that.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main difference between marketing and non-marketing contacts in HubSpot?

The main difference is that marketing contacts are individuals you actively engage with through HubSpot’s marketing tools like marketing emails, ads, and automated workflows, and they count towards your paid subscription limit. Non-marketing contacts, on the other hand, are stored in your CRM but do not receive these marketing communications and generally do not count towards your billable marketing contact limit, saving you money.

Are non-marketing contacts truly free in HubSpot?

For paid Marketing Hub plans, yes, you can typically store a very large number of non-marketing contacts up to 1,000,000 is often cited in your CRM for free, as they don’t count towards your billable marketing contact tier. However, for users on the free HubSpot CRM, there’s conflicting information. while overall CRM storage can be up to 1,000,000 contacts, some recent reports suggest the limit for designated non-marketing contacts on the free tier might be as low as 1,000. Always check your specific HubSpot account’s “Usage & Limits” for the most accurate information.

How do I change a contact’s status to non-marketing in HubSpot?

You can do this manually or automatically. Manually, navigate to CRM > Contacts, select the contacts, click “More” or “Actions,” and choose “Set as non-marketing contacts”. You can also edit the “Marketing contact” property on an individual contact record. For automation, use workflows available in Professional and Enterprise plans to automatically set contacts as non-marketing based on triggers like unsubscribes, hard bounces, or prolonged inactivity.

What happens if I convert a marketing contact to a non-marketing contact? Does it immediately reduce my bill?

Not always immediately. While you can change a contact’s status to non-marketing at any time, the billing impact typically takes effect on your next “update date” or subscription renewal date. This means if you change a marketing contact to non-marketing mid-month, you’ll usually still be billed for them as a marketing contact until that next update date. It’s crucial to plan these changes strategically before your billing cycle renews. The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Your HubSpot Meeting Link

Can I still email non-marketing contacts?

Yes, but not through HubSpot’s mass marketing tools or automated marketing workflows. You can still engage with non-marketing contacts through one-to-one emails like from a sales rep’s inbox connected to HubSpot, personal calls, meetings, or customer service interactions. They remain in your CRM for a complete view of their history and interactions, just without the automated marketing outreach.

What are the consequences of exceeding my marketing contact limit?

If you exceed your marketing contact limit, HubSpot will typically automatically upgrade you to the next higher contact tier. You will then be billed at the higher rate for that tier, and you generally cannot downgrade your contact tier until your next annual subscription renewal date. This can lead to unexpected and significantly increased costs, so it’s vital to monitor your contact count in the “Usage & Limits” section of your account regularly.