Written by Julien Ricciarelli-Bonnal

21 July 2026

Is HubSpot Going Too Far With Its Customers’ Data?

On 1 July 2026, HubSpot announced a change to its data enrichment services designed to support Contact Discovery, a new tool intended to help users identify and complete more professional contacts. To improve the quality of this database, certain enrichment information, including professional contact details, employer data and signals related to email deliverability, could have been used for the benefit of other customers on the platform. Companies would have retained the ability to opt out, but the system was initially based on participation by default. 

The reaction was immediate. For some users, HubSpot was no longer simply enriching their CRM through external sources. It was creating a system in which data verified or consolidated through each customer’s work could improve the databases of others. The boundary between internal information, public data and shared enrichment had become blurred enough to trigger a crisis of confidence.

Four days later, HubSpot abandoned the announced change altogether. In a message entitled “We Got This Wrong. And We Are Fixing It”, the company acknowledged its mistake, apologised and confirmed that it would not implement the new terms communicated on 1 July. Contact Discovery would be reconsidered before any possible future release. 

HubSpot’s rapid reversal could have closed the debate. Instead, it revealed a tension that will soon concern every customer relationship management platform: as software providers try to make their databases more intelligent, complete and useful, how far can they go in exploiting the data entrusted to them by their customers?

A CRM Contains More Than Professional Contact Details

It would be too easy to frame the debate as a simple conflict between innovation and data protection. Professional information already circulates through databases, websites and enrichment providers. A business email address or job title does not carry the same sensitivity as medical or personal financial data.

Yet a CRM is never merely a collection of digital business cards. It contains the organisation’s commercial memory: contacts, relationships, opportunities, conversations and priority accounts. Even ordinary information gains value through its presence in the database, its level of verification and its connection with other data.

Part of that value comes from the software, but another part comes from the customer’s work. A sales team corrects a job title, removes an outdated address or links a contact to the right company. At scale, those corrections turn an unreliable database into a dependable commercial asset.

This is where shared enrichment becomes sensitive. Combining independent sources is a conventional service. Using customers’ corrections, validations or signals to improve results across the ecosystem shifts the boundary: the customer may also be contributing to the platform’s increasing value.

The issue is not purely legal. It concerns ownership, effort and the benefit received in return. A company may accept analysis that improves its own operations while rejecting the idea that its work should indirectly benefit other organisations, including competitors.

Shared Enrichment Has Genuine Value

The backlash should not obscure the usefulness of the service. CRM databases deteriorate quickly as people change companies, addresses become invalid and duplicates accumulate. Poor data quality slows sales teams, damages deliverability and undermines reporting.

Companies therefore spend time and money keeping information current. Specialist providers already combine public sources and partner databases to verify professional details. A software company with access to millions of updated records could naturally improve its service.

Shared enrichment may create a virtuous cycle. More corrections improve reliability, save time and reduce outdated outreach. The principle is not absurd, and not every circulation of data amounts to abusive appropriation.

The problem lies elsewhere.

Collective usefulness does not automatically justify the method used. Customers need to understand which data are involved, how they are transformed, who may benefit from them and what they are genuinely giving up by participating. When the answer requires reading several legal documents and changing a setting to refuse the arrangement, the legitimacy of the proposal immediately weakens.

Default Participation Turned Innovation Into a Crisis of Trust

The main point of failure was probably not the existence of Contact Discovery, but the way HubSpot intended to supply it. The company argued that customers could disable the enrichment and presented that option as an expression of choice. Critics, however, believed that genuine consent should have required voluntary participation rather than automatic inclusion followed by an opt-out.

The difference may appear administrative, but it changes the relationship of trust. In an opt-in system, the platform must explain the value and persuade customers to participate. In a default system, it benefits from passivity or limited awareness of the settings. Responsibility then shifts from the provider to the user.

That mechanism is particularly sensitive for a CRM. Businesses use it to centralise a strategic resource they no longer want scattered across files and tools. Any ambiguity around data circulation therefore touches the product’s most fundamental promise.

HubSpot’s rapid reversal suggests that it understood the depth of the problem. By acknowledging the mistake and withdrawing the proposed terms, it prevented a technical dispute from becoming a lasting rupture. The response was a strong example of crisis management: identify the concern, reverse the decision and reconsider the product.

That response does not remove the need to redesign Contact Discovery. The service addresses a genuine problem, but any future version will have to demonstrate that enrichment can remain useful without making customers feel that their own CRM is quietly feeding a collective database.

Software Providers Are Turning Data Into Raw Material

The HubSpot episode extends far beyond one company. Professional software providers no longer want merely to store information. They want to analyse, compare and enrich it, then make it usable by assistants capable of recommending or carrying out actions. Their value increasingly depends on the quantity and quality of the data they can access.

This creates a subtle economic shift. Customers once bought software mainly to exploit their own databases. Today, some platforms build part of their advantage through insights generated across their entire user base. The service’s intelligence increasingly rests on that collective mass.

Businesses can no longer treat terms of service as a legal formality. Choosing a CRM or marketing platform shapes how information circulates, is enriched and may contribute to other products. The decision affects strategy, customer relationships, competition and reputation.

Before connecting additional services, companies need to reassess the coherence of their marketing and communication strategy⁠  so they can distinguish between data that merely support operations, information that represents a genuine competitive advantage and practices that could weaken the confidence of their own prospects or customers. 

This vigilance does not require rejecting innovation. A company may accept shared enrichment when it understands the mechanism, receives proportionate value and retains meaningful control. It may also choose a more closed system when the quality of its database reflects an investment it does not wish to share.

HubSpot Reversed Its Decision, but the Dilemma Remains

Did HubSpot go too far? By initially choosing default participation and communicating the proposed data sharing with insufficient clarity, the answer is probably yes. Its reversal implicitly acknowledged that conclusion. The underlying idea, however, will not disappear, whether at HubSpot or elsewhere.

CRM providers will continue to enrich data and automate updates, while customers demand more reliable databases without carrying the full maintenance cost. Software companies will therefore keep using the network effects created by their platforms.

The acceptable boundary will depend less on the technology itself than on the method. Shared enrichment that is clearly explained, limited to necessary information, activated voluntarily and accompanied by an identifiable benefit may be defensible. The same system, buried in a legal update and enabled by default, immediately looks like extraction.

By reversing course within four days, HubSpot protected some of the trust it had built with customers. It also gave the wider sector a useful lesson: professional data are never neutral simply because they appear to be public. Their value comes from context, verification and the work accumulated around them.

Platforms can make CRM systems more intelligent. They will only be able to do so sustainably by allowing customers to understand, choose and control how that intelligence is built.

👉 A change to your data practices, tools or operating model can quickly become a reputational issue when it is poorly explained. Ricciarelli Partners can help you build a clear, credible and proportionate public relations strategy⁠.