HubSpot has released a new billing safeguard that every Super Admin should configure immediately: the ability to set a maximum marketing contact limit.
The new setting gives organizations more control over how many contacts can be designated as marketing contacts. Once the maximum is reached, manual imports and automated features will no longer make additional contacts marketing contacts. Those contacts can still be added to the CRM, but they will be created as non-marketing contacts instead.
Why does this matter? Because exceeding your included marketing contact tier can trigger an automatic upgrade—and that upgrade can affect your subscription cost for the remainder of your contract term.
Until now, HubSpot administrators could monitor marketing contact usage, clean up their contacts and control which tools created marketing contacts. What they could not do was establish a firm ceiling to prevent an import, integration or automation from unexpectedly pushing the portal into a higher tier.
That has finally changed.
Marketing contacts are the contacts your organization plans to actively engage through HubSpot’s marketing tools.
Only contacts designated as marketing contacts can receive HubSpot marketing emails or be included in certain advertising audiences. These contacts count toward the marketing contact tier included in your Marketing Hub subscription.
Non-marketing contacts, by comparison, are stored in your CRM but do not count toward your billable marketing contact tier.
This distinction allows organizations to maintain a much larger CRM database without paying to market to every person in it.
For example, your HubSpot portal might include:
You may need these records for sales, service, reporting, associations or historical context, but that does not mean you need to send marketing emails or ads to all of them.
Those contacts can remain non-marketing until there is a legitimate reason to include them in your active marketing audience.
HubSpot introduced marketing contacts to separate CRM database size from marketing audience size.
In other words, HubSpot recognizes that the number of people stored in your CRM is not necessarily the same as the number of people you are actively marketing to.
Without that distinction, organizations could be charged based on every contact in their database—even contacts that marketing never intended to engage. Marketing contacts allow HubSpot customers to use the CRM as a broader system of record while paying for the contacts who need access to Marketing Hub functionality.
This is especially important for organizations using HubSpot across multiple departments.
Sales may need records for prospects and referral partners. Customer success may need access to every customer contact. Service teams may need historical support records. Finance may need billing contacts. An association may need to retain former members, speakers, exhibitors, sponsors and volunteers.
All of those contacts can live in HubSpot without necessarily becoming billable marketing contacts.
For most organizations, the practical answer is yes: you can maintain far more contacts in HubSpot than the number included in your marketing contact tier.
The important distinction is that HubSpot has two different types of limits:
HubSpot’s current product catalog allows accounts to store up to 15 million total CRM object records, with contacts counting as objects. Organizations with substantially larger databases can purchase an increase that supports up to 50 million contact records.
That is not technically unlimited, but it is effectively unlimited for the vast majority of HubSpot customers.
You might therefore have 100,000 contacts stored in your CRM while maintaining a marketing contact tier of only 10,000. The remaining 90,000 contacts can stay in HubSpot as non-marketing contacts without increasing your marketing contact tier.
This is why deleting contacts solely to control Marketing Hub costs is rarely the best first step. A better strategy is often to retain the records you still need and manage their marketing contact status appropriately.
HubSpot marketing contact tiers are not soft limits.
If the number of marketing contacts in your portal exceeds your current tier, HubSpot can automatically upgrade the subscription to the next applicable contact tier. According to HubSpot’s billing terms, that increase can take effect during the current billing period and remain in place for the rest of the subscription term.
Reducing your number of marketing contacts afterward does not necessarily reverse that upgrade immediately.
This can turn a relatively simple administrative error into a lasting budget issue.
Imagine that your portal includes 9,800 marketing contacts and your current tier allows 10,000. A user imports a list of 500 event attendees and selects the option to make them marketing contacts. Your total rises to 10,300, pushing the account beyond its current tier.
Alternatively, a workflow, form or integration could gradually add marketing contacts until you cross the threshold without any single dramatic import.
Before this update, admins could receive notifications and monitor their usage, but there was no definitive setting that prevented the portal from exceeding an internally approved maximum.
The new Maximum Marketing Contacts setting allows authorized users to establish a ceiling on the number of contacts that can be designated as marketing contacts.
Once the account reaches that maximum:
This provides an important layer of protection between your operational processes and your HubSpot bill.
It does not eliminate the need to govern marketing contacts. It does, however, reduce the risk that one import, workflow or connected application will unexpectedly push the account into a higher contact tier.
To configure your maximum:
You must be a Super Admin or have the Modify Billing permission to change this setting.
The feature is available across all Marketing Hub and Customer Platform tiers.
Do not automatically set the maximum equal to the highest number your subscription allows without first reviewing your current usage and marketing strategy.
Your limit should account for:
For example, if your plan includes 10,000 marketing contacts, you might establish a maximum below that threshold so your team has time to review the database before reaching the contractual limit.
The appropriate buffer will depend on how quickly contacts enter your database. An organization adding thousands of contacts through events or integrations needs more breathing room than one adding a few dozen contacts each month.
The goal is not simply to stop growth. It is to make growth intentional.
A contact should generally be designated as a marketing contact when:
A contact should generally remain non-marketing when:
Marketing contact status should reflect your intended use of the record. It should not be treated as a substitute for email subscription status or consent.
A person can be a marketing contact and still be opted out of a particular subscription type. Likewise, making someone a marketing contact does not create permission to communicate with them. Marketing eligibility, subscription preferences and data privacy requirements must still be managed separately.
Yes. Non-marketing contacts remain contact records in your HubSpot CRM.
Your teams can still retain important information, review activity history, associate those contacts with companies, deals and tickets, and use the records in appropriate sales, service and operational processes.
The main restriction is that non-marketing contacts cannot be used with certain Marketing Hub features, including HubSpot marketing email and ad targeting.
If a non-marketing contact later becomes part of an active marketing audience, an authorized process or user can change that contact’s status to marketing—as long as doing so does not exceed the maximum you have established.
This new feature is significant, but it should complement a broader marketing contact governance plan.
HubSpot admins should also regularly review:
Remember that changing an existing marketing contact to non-marketing is not always immediate. HubSpot schedules that change to take effect on the account’s next monthly update date. Planning ahead is essential if you are approaching your tier limit.
HubSpot’s new maximum marketing contact limit gives administrators something they have needed for a long time: a hard safeguard against accidental marketing contact growth.
You can still maintain a large, centralized CRM database. You can still add sales, service, customer, partner and historical records. You can still activate contacts for marketing when there is a legitimate need.
The difference is that an import or automated process can no longer quietly push your marketing contact count beyond the maximum your organization has approved.
If you do one thing in HubSpot today, set this limit.
It could take only a few minutes—and prevent an expensive surprise later.
A marketing contact is a contact who can be engaged through certain HubSpot marketing tools, including marketing email and ad targeting. Marketing contacts count toward the billable contact tier associated with a Marketing Hub subscription.
Non-marketing contacts do not count toward your billable marketing contact tier. They still count toward HubSpot’s overall CRM record limits and remain available for appropriate CRM, sales and service uses.
Yes. Your marketing contact tier controls how many contacts can use certain marketing tools, not how many contact records you can store in the CRM. Most organizations can therefore store significantly more contacts than they actively market to.
Without a lower maximum configured, exceeding your contracted marketing contact tier can trigger an automatic upgrade to the next applicable tier. The resulting subscription increase may remain in effect for the rest of your contract term.
Manual imports and automated features will no longer set additional contacts as marketing contacts. Contacts that would exceed the maximum will instead be added or retained as non-marketing contacts, and relevant users will receive notifications.
Yes. A non-marketing contact can be changed to a marketing contact when you are ready to use that person in eligible marketing activities, provided the change does not exceed your configured maximum.
HubSpot Super Admins and users with the Modify Billing permission can configure the maximum from the Marketing Contacts page within Account & Billing.
According to HubSpot’s August 14, 2026 product update, the feature is available to customers across all Marketing Hub and Customer Platform tiers.