You’re Probably Paying for Contacts You Shouldn’t Be

It’s about having a CRM that reflects reality.

The marketing vs. non-marketing contact setting is one of the most misunderstood — and most expensive — things in HubSpot.

Here’s a conversation I’ve had more times than I can count.

A client is reviewing their HubSpot subscription and something doesn’t add up. Their contact count looks right, but their bill keeps creeping up. Or they just hit a tier threshold that surprised them.

Nine times out of ten, the culprit is marketing contacts.

First — What’s the Difference?

HubSpot splits your contacts into two buckets:

Marketing contacts — contacts you’re actively marketing to. These count toward your contact tier and directly affect your subscription cost.
Non-marketing contacts — contacts in your portal that you’re not marketing to. They don’t count toward your tier. They’re essentially free to store.

Sounds simple. Here’s where it gets people.

HubSpot doesn’t charge you per email sent. It charges you based on how many contacts are designated as marketing at the start of each month. That snapshot happens on the first day of the month — and that’s the number that determines what you pay.

Which means if you have 10,000 contacts set to marketing and you’re only actively emailing 3,000 of them… you’re paying for 10,000.

How Does a Contact Become a Marketing Contact?

A few ways this happens — sometimes intentionally, sometimes not:

A contact fills out a HubSpot form (often set to marketing by default)
You import a list and check the “set as marketing contacts” box without thinking twice
A workflow sets the status without anyone realizing it’s doing that
You’ve never touched the setting, so everything that came in is still whatever it defaulted to

The most common situation I see? Someone set up HubSpot a few years ago, contacts poured in, and nobody ever revisited who actually needed to be marked as marketing.

What People Assume Happens (But Doesn’t)

This is the part I always have to explain.

Most people assume that when a contact unsubscribes or bounces, HubSpot automatically flips them to non-marketing.

It doesn’t.

An unsubscribed contact is still a marketing contact. A hard bounced contact is still a marketing contact. They just can’t receive emails anymore — but they’re still counted in your tier.

That means you’re potentially paying for contacts who will never receive another email from you. And that list grows over time if nobody’s managing it.

(Note: If this changed in a recent HubSpot update, I’d love to be corrected — but as of everything I’ve seen in client portals, this is still manual.)

So What Do You Actually Do About It?

A few practical approaches:

Build a workflow that sets contacts to non-marketing when they unsubscribe, hard bounce, or hit a certain period of inactivity. It’s not automatic — but it can be automated once you set it up.
Audit your import habits. Get in the habit of asking “does this contact actually need to receive marketing emails?” before checking that box.
Review your forms. If a form is capturing cold leads or initial inquiries, those contacts don’t necessarily need to be marketing contacts on day one.
Use sequences for early outreach. If you’re doing initial warm outreach to prospects, HubSpot sequences send from your connected inbox — not the marketing infrastructure — and the contact doesn’t need to be a marketing contact at all. Switch them to marketing once they’re actually in a nurture track.

That last point is worth sitting with for a second. Sequences are a sales tool. Marketing emails are a nurture tool. They serve different purposes at different stages. Using the right one at the right time keeps your contact tier cleaner and your deliverability healthier.

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t just about saving money — though it can save a meaningful amount depending on your portal size.

It’s about having a CRM that reflects reality. If your marketing contact count is inflated with bounced addresses, unsubscribers, and contacts you haven’t touched in two years, your reporting doesn’t mean much either.

Clean designations lead to cleaner data. Cleaner data leads to reporting you can actually trust.

If you’ve never reviewed your marketing vs. non-marketing contact split, that’s a great place to start. And if you want a second set of eyes on how your portal is set up, let’s talk.

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