Tired of emails bouncing and clogging up your Hubspot workflows? You’re not alone. If you want cleaner lists, fewer bounces, and better deliverability, integrating a real-time email validation tool is a no-brainer. This guide is for marketers, sales folks, and anyone who lives in Hubspot and doesn’t want to waste time (or money) sending emails to dead addresses.
Here’s how to hook up Neverbounce—a popular email verification service—to Hubspot, and what you should watch out for along the way.
Why bother validating emails in Hubspot?
Before we get into the how, let’s be honest about the why. Hubspot is great at managing contacts, but it won’t stop you from importing or collecting junk emails—typos, bots, or addresses that just don’t exist. Here’s what happens if you skip validation:
- Your emails bounce. Too many and your sender reputation tanks.
- You waste money. Hubspot charges by the contact—why pay for fake ones?
- Reporting gets messy. Bad data means bad insights.
Using a tool like Neverbounce to clean your list means you reach real people, not ghosts. If you’re running any kind of outbound campaign (email, sequences, newsletters), this is table stakes.
Step 1: Get your Neverbounce and Hubspot accounts ready
You’ll need active accounts on both platforms. If you haven’t signed up for Neverbounce yet, do that first. There’s a free trial, but you’ll need a paid plan to validate a lot of emails or set up ongoing automations.
What you need: - Hubspot account (with permissions to edit contacts and workflows) - Neverbounce account (with API access—comes with all paid plans) - Admin access or the ability to install integrations in both tools
Pro tip: If you’re part of a team, check with your admin before you start connecting things. Some companies lock down integrations.
Step 2: Decide how you want to validate emails
There are a few ways to plug Neverbounce into Hubspot. Don’t get lost in the weeds—pick the setup that actually fits your workflow:
Option A: One-off bulk list cleaning
If you just want to clean a big list before importing it, use Neverbounce’s bulk list tool.
- Export your contacts from Hubspot (CSV).
- Upload the CSV to Neverbounce.
- Download the “clean” list and import it back into Hubspot.
When to use:
You’re doing a one-time clean or running a periodic sweep. Simple, but manual. No ongoing sync.
Option B: Real-time validation via Zapier or Make (Integromat)
For ongoing, automated validation as new contacts come in, use a connector tool like Zapier or Make.
- Set up a Zap or scenario: When a new contact is added in Hubspot, send the email to Neverbounce for validation.
- If valid, mark the contact or add a tag/property in Hubspot.
- If invalid, trigger a workflow (e.g., notify a team member, set a custom property, or even delete the contact).
When to use:
You want automation but don’t want to muck around with APIs. Works well for most small to mid-sized teams.
Option C: Direct API Integration
If you’ve got development resources or like tinkering, you can connect Hubspot and Neverbounce via their respective APIs.
- Use Hubspot’s workflow extensions or webhooks to send contact data to Neverbounce’s API.
- Process the response and update the contact in Hubspot.
When to use:
You need full control, want to build custom logic, or have privacy/compliance needs.
What to ignore:
Neverbounce’s built-in “native” integrations with Hubspot are limited or sometimes outdated. You’ll almost always get more flexibility using Zapier, Make, or a direct API connection.
Step 3: Set up your integration (Zapier example)
Let’s walk through the most common setup: real-time validation with Zapier. This is straightforward and doesn’t require coding.
1. Connect Hubspot and Neverbounce to Zapier
- Log in to Zapier.
- Click “Create Zap.”
- For the Trigger, choose Hubspot and pick “New Contact” (or whatever fits your workflow).
- Connect your Hubspot account and test the trigger.
2. Add Neverbounce as the Action
- For the Action, search for Neverbounce and select “Verify Email Address.”
- Connect your Neverbounce account (you’ll need your API key—find it in Neverbounce under “API Settings”).
- Map the “Email” field from your Hubspot contact to Neverbounce.
3. Handle the results
- Add a “Filter” step in Zapier to only continue if Neverbounce says the email is “Valid.”
- For invalid emails, you can:
- Add a tag or property to flag them.
- Notify someone on your team.
- Automatically unsubscribe or delete the contact (be careful with this—sometimes false positives happen).
4. Update the contact in Hubspot
- Add an action to update the Hubspot contact, e.g., set a custom property like “Email Validated” to “Yes” or “No.”
Pro tip: Build in a manual review step for “unknown” or “catch-all” results. Not every invalid is truly bad, but most are.
Step 4: Bulk cleaning before import (if you need it)
Sometimes you get handed a list and just want it cleaned—fast. Here’s the no-nonsense approach:
- Export your list from Hubspot as CSV.
- Upload it to Neverbounce’s “Single List Cleaning” tool.
- Wait for processing (could take minutes or hours, depending on list size).
- Download the cleaned file—Neverbounce will mark emails as “valid,” “invalid,” “catch-all,” or “unknown.”
- Import only the “valid” emails back into Hubspot.
Don’t bother: Importing “catch-all” addresses unless you know what you’re doing. These often bounce anyway.
Step 5: Automate actions in Hubspot (optional, but smart)
After validation, you can set up Hubspot workflows to treat contacts differently based on their email status.
- Send marketing emails only to “validated” contacts.
- Notify your team if a high-value lead has a bad email.
- Automatically unenroll invalid contacts from sequences.
Heads up: Hubspot’s workflow automation is only as good as your data. If validation gets skipped (because of integration errors or limits), you might still send emails to bad addresses. Monitor your workflows after setting this up.
What actually works—and what to watch out for
Works well: - Real-time validation on new signups or form submissions. - Bulk list cleaning before big sends. - Automatically flagging or segmenting invalid contacts.
Not so great: - Relying on “catch-all” or “unknown” results—these are a gray area. - Using only one-off cleaning if you collect lots of new leads daily. - Setting and forgetting your integration—API keys expire, and integrations break.
Ignore the hype:
No tool can guarantee zero bounces. Neverbounce is solid, but nothing replaces good list hygiene and permission-based marketing. If you buy lists or collect emails in shady ways, you’ll still get junk.
Troubleshooting common headaches
- Emails marked “valid” still bounce: Some domains accept all emails but silently drop invalid ones. This is the “catch-all” problem. There’s no silver bullet.
- Zapier/Make integrations stop working: Check your API keys and integration logs. Sometimes you’ll hit rate limits or authentication errors.
- Hubspot import errors: Make sure your cleaned CSV matches Hubspot’s import format, or you’ll be stuck reformatting.
Keep it simple, and keep an eye on it
Don’t overcomplicate things. Start with a basic integration, test it with a small batch, and watch what happens. Automate only what you trust. If you’re ever in doubt, stick to cleaning new leads as they come in—fewer headaches, better results.
Clean data beats clever setups every time. Iterate as you go, and you’ll spend less time firefighting and more time actually reaching your audience.