Call recording best practices

Please note: this Knowledge Base article is neither an exhaustive summary of global call recording laws nor legal advice. Instead, it provides information to help you better understand call recording best practices. From a legal and compliance standpoint, it is your responsibility to understand your consent obligations and obtain proper consent from your calls when recording calls.

The call recording feature in HubSpot allows you to keep records of your phone calls with contacts to make follow-up calls easier and keep your team up-to-date.

The information below is designed to provide you with best practices on recording calls and obtaining consent; however, HubSpot always recommends you seek legal counsel for your specific compliance obligations.

How call recording works

Recording and transcription is turned on by default in your call settings. This means that all inbound and outbound calls are recorded unless you turn call recording off in your calling settings. It’s the responsibility of your users to obtain consent from your call participants when recording calls.


When an outbound call is placed, all calls are automatically recorded. The dialer will display that the call is being recorded, and your users will be able to press the Record button if they need to stop or pause recording.

When an inbound call is received, all calls are automatically recorded. The recording consent message plays before the rep picks up the phone so customers have the option to decline the call. To change the recording consent message that plays for inbound calls, learn more about customizing your recording consent message. 

Consent for call recordings

Call recording laws differ across jurisdictions.

For instance, in the United States, there are 'One Party Consent’ states, where you must notify and get consent from at least one of the parties on the call, and ‘All Party’ states, which require obtaining consent of all parties to the communication before recording the conversation. If a party does not want to be recorded after being notified, it is up to the party to leave the call.

It’s always good practice to get consent when you’re uncertain, or to make it a policy to always ask for consent regardless of your contact’s location, since global call recording laws and regulations change over time.

The GDPR, and other European regulations like the ePrivacy Regulation, generally require consent from all parties on a call for the call to be recorded. This means that the parties should be presented with an affirmative opt-in, with a meaningful way to opt out of the recording. The GDPR also require a valid and legal reason for recording the call that would allow the information to be collected. Be sure to check call recording rules in your specific country, as the EU member states have implemented different rules that apply to call recording consent in different contexts.

Please note: while this Knowledge Base article has chosen to highlight certain countries and jurisdictions above, it's by no means an exhaustive list. Before recording an inbound or outbound call in HubSpot, make sure that you have a comprehensive understanding of any call recording laws and regulations. As a best practice, always obtain consent if you are in doubt.

Other privacy considerations

Employee monitoring

Another aspect to consider when recording calls is employee privacy. Other users in the portal (i.e., your employees or coworkers) will also be recorded, so you may need to consider notifying other users in your HubSpot account that their calls will be monitored internally.

Call recording security and storage

HubSpot calling is powered by Twilio, a Voice Over IP (VOIP) service that connects the call between you and the number you're calling. HubSpot uses Twilio to record and store any calls that your users choose to record. All call recordings are stored on Twilio’s servers and can be accessed by HubSpot. 

HubSpot's recording links are not authenticated, and therefore, publicly accessible. It is important that you do not distribute recordings externally because anyone with the link will be able to access the recording. However, recording URLs are long and difficult to guess, so the contents of the recordings should be reasonably private unless you distribute the URL. For more information, please review Twilio's documentation. 

The ability to record calls is an account-wide setting, affecting all users who are making calls in the account. It can be turned on or off by a user with Account access permissions. Newly created HubSpot accounts will have the Allow call recording checkbox enabled by default.