We Got This Wrong. And We Are Fixing It - Announcements - HubSpot Community

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We Got This Wrong. And We Are Fixing It

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announcement

dlennox

July 5, 2026, 7:23pm

We made a mistake. Nothing matters more to us than the trust of our customers, and with our recent terms of service update we let you down. We are sorry about that. We will not move forward with the terms of service changes we communicated on July 1, 2026.

You control your data. This has always been our policy and will not change. I want to explain what we were trying to do, where we went wrong, and how we’ll do better from here to earn and keep your trust.

What we were trying to do

We know how important prospecting is for customers who need to build pipeline. For a long time, much of the market has treated outbound as a volume game, using generic lists and spray-and-pray campaigns. That approach has never created the best experience for buyers, and it’s only become less effective as inboxes have gotten noisier.

We see an opportunity for a better vision, one that puts trust and relevance at the center of prospecting in the same way we did with inbound marketing. As this idea evolved, we called it Trusted Prospecting: helping you reach the right people, at the right time, with data and signals that make outreach feel timely and useful – not like spam.

In that context, a continuously refining dataset can play a role by improving accuracy, deliverability, and outcomes for everyone. That was the motivation behind our original announcement — to move prospecting in this more reliable, trusted direction for HubSpot customers.

Where we went wrong

We did not meet the standard you expect from HubSpot when it comes to transparency. Even though our intent was to work with “business card–level” professional details in a shared enrichment dataset, the way we rolled this out made it feel like the relationship you have with your CRM (and with HubSpot) was changing underneath you. That’s on us and we are sorry.

We should have been clear about what we were proposing and how it would work. While we always intended for enrichment to remain strictly opt-in, we should have communicated better how that opt-in works, and importantly, how you as a customer could ensure you remain in control of that choice.

I also want to take this moment to clarify our commitment to customers that your CRM data – your contacts, notes, deals, call recordings, custom fields, and customer records – belongs to you. It should not be used without your permission, and never in ways you don’t expect.

How we’ll do better from here

First, we will not move forward with the terms of service changes we announced on July 1.

On the product side, we are reassessing how to make opting into contact enrichment clearer, more easily governable, and simpler to manage.

We commit to you that when we introduce new enrichment capabilities that make use of your data, they will be fully and transparently opt‑in. You will have clear, upfront control over whether you participate and how your data is used in this context.

We still believe that there is a better, more effective way to prospect than the status quo. But we have to earn your trust as we build it together.

We’ll take the time to do this the right way, and we’ll communicate early, clearly, and across multiple channels before any future changes that affect your data.

Thank you for the feedback, the pushback, and the honesty. We can and will do better.

37 Likes

July 1, 2026, Contact Discovery is Coming Soon + Legal Update

Clarification Needed: AI Model Training vs. Enrichment Data Sharing

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hammad

July 6, 2026, 3:15am

Thank you for accepting and taking a corrective measure.

1 Like

GiantFocal

July 6, 2026, 7:12am

Thank you for owning this and reverting the changes!

1 Like

Aakar

July 6, 2026, 10:20am

Thank you for reverting it.

romeonoi

July 6, 2026, 11:14am

@dlennox I love how fast you guys moved, and you actually recognized that. What I would recommend in the future is that you listen to your customers and your partners. For such decisions, you should make advisory councils, like the ones you have for partners and for customers.

If you would have listened, these mistakes would not have been made, because you would have a group of people dedicating their time and energy to building a better product and a better community, not only for the shareholders but also for all the people involved:

people that gave you...