How does HubSpot prevent duplicates by default?
According to HubSpot deduplication documentation, contacts are deduplicated by email address and companies by company domain name.
A form submission or an import with an existing email updates that contact instead of creating a new one.
Why do duplicates still appear?
- The same person writes from a personal and a work email.
- Companies were created without a domain, so HubSpot has nothing to match on.
- The ERP and the forms create the same company under its legal name and its trading name.
- Reps create records by hand before searching for them.
How do you find duplicates with HubSpot tools?
The duplicates management tool suggests pairs of contacts and companies. It requires a Professional or Enterprise subscription.
For contacts it compares first name, last name, email, phone, IP country, zip code and company; for companies, domain, name, country, phone and industry.
How do you decide what to merge?
- Owner: if each record has a different owner, agree who keeps the relationship first.
- Lifecycle stage and open deals: a merge can move a customer back or join two buying processes.
- Associations: confirm it is the same person or company, not two branches or subsidiaries.
- Subscriptions and consent: keep the most restrictive communication preference.
When in doubt, do not merge. Mark the pair for review with its owner and document the rule you used.
How do you prevent new duplicates?
- Give every company a domainIncluding the ones created by integrations.
- Choose one source of creation per objectIf your ERP and your forms both create companies, define which one wins.
- Import with a unique identifierEmail, domain or record ID, so imports update instead of creating.
- Search before creatingAnd show why it matters inside the record, not in a manual nobody reads.
What can HubSpot Audit measure, and what does it not do?
HubSpot Audit measures the conditions that create duplicates: companies without a domain, contacts without email, placeholder names and how many sources create each object.
HubSpot Audit does not merge records: merging stays in HubSpot, with your team's judgment. For the broader picture, see the seven data quality problems.