Last updated: October 3, 2026
Available with any of the following subscriptions, except where noted:
When you send a marketing email or a one-to-one email from your email inbox using the HubSpot Sales Chrome extension, HubSpot Sales Office 365 add-in, or HubSpot Sales Outlook desktop add-in, or if you send a one-to-one email from a record, HubSpot will track email opens. If you're a user with an assigned Sales Hub seat, HubSpot will also track when the recipient clicks a link in the email.
HubSpot will not generate open or click events for sales emails when the interaction comes from a non-human source, such as bot activity.
Before you get started
Before you use this feature, review the consent requirements and limitations.
Email tracking consent compliance
Some countries, such as France and Italy, require that your recipients provide consent before tracking email opens and clicks. These requirements apply to any sender emailing recipients in those countries, regardless of where the sender is based. Compliance responsibility sits with the sender. Review email tracking guidelines for obtaining prior consent and consult your legal team to determine the requirements and exemptions that apply to your specific situation.
If a recipient hasn't provided consent, you can turn off open and click tracking for your account or for individual emails. The available options depend on the type of email you're sending. Learn how to turn off tracking for marketing and one-to-one emails.
Please note: features that rely on email open or click events may have incomplete data or limited functionality when tracking is turned off. Learn more about how turning off tracking affects other HubSpot features.
Please note: while HubSpot provides these features, your legal team is the best resource to give you compliance advice for your specific situation.
Limitations & considerations
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Some email clients may be configured to prevent HubSpot's open tracking pixel from loading. When the open tracking pixel fails to load, HubSpot cannot report on associated open tracking for that email. If a recipient opens one of your emails then clicks an email link or replies to the email itself, HubSpot can infer they opened the email and will retroactively report the open event.
- It's not possible to see whether a tracked email was forwarded to another recipient. In some cases, if you open the email in your sent folder, you may trigger a self-open notification. Learn how to block self-open notifications for the Chrome extension and Outlook desktop add-in.
Manage tracking by email type
You can track opens and clicks for both marketing emails and one-to-one emails. Tracking settings and requirements depend on the type of email you send:
- Marketing emails: learn how to manage marketing email open and click tracking.
- One-to-one emails: learn how to manage tracking for one-to-one emails.
How email open tracking works
Please note: if you've turned on data privacy settings in your account, email opens can only be tracked for contacts with an assigned legal basis for data processing. Learn more about how data privacy impacts email tracking with the Chrome or Office 365 extension.
When you send a marketing email, or a tracked sales email, HubSpot embeds an invisible one-pixel image into the email message once it is sent. When your recipient views the email and the images load, you'll receive a notification that the email has been opened.
HubSpot excludes suspected non-human interactions, such as bot activity or emails sent via forwarding addresses, from your sales email analytics.
If the recipient's email client doesn't allow the track pixel to load, HubSpot will not be able to track the email open. HubSpot tracking can be deactivated in the following situations:
- The recipient formats their email in plain text.
- The recipient's email client doesn't automatically download images.
- The recipient's corporate filter strips away all images for incoming emails.
If the recipient has a very strict spam filter where they block any images or link tracking from loading in emails, your tracked email could be filtered as spam. However, email tracking tools are common, and the majority of email clients will not view your email any differently than before.
Open tracking for one-to-one emails use links that redirect through HubSpot to count activities. By default, these links use HubSpot-provided domains. To use your own domain, connect a custom sales and service email tracking domain.
Why am I getting multiple email opens for a specific tracked email?
If you receive more email open notifications than expected for a specific tracked email, it may indicate that the email was forwarded or that you copied and pasted a previously sent email. Because of privacy and security concerns, when an email is forwarded, HubSpot defaults to telling you that the original sender opened the email again.
If you copied and pasted an email that you previously had sent, you also copied the original tracking pixel. The same tracking pixel would load for each recipient. It's recommended to send personalized emails, which you can create from scratch in the CRM or your mail client, or to use sales email templates.
Sometimes, a single tracking image will load multiple times because of how the recipient views their emails. For example, a user could be on a server that dynamically changes that user's IP address. If the image is loaded from multiple IP addresses, then the notifications may indicate that your emails were opened by multiple people.
Also, email clients like Outlook or Apple Mail have a preview pane as part of the inbox view. If recipients scroll over your email in their inbox, this can trigger an email open notification.
Why is the open timestamp the same as the click or reply event?
Some email clients prevent HubSpot's email open tracking pixel from loading. When this happens, HubSpot can't directly record that the email was opened.
If the recipient later clicks a tracked link in the email or replies to it, HubSpot can infer that the email was opened. If the email previously had 0 recorded opens, HubSpot will create 1 inferred open event.
The inferred open uses the same timestamp as the first click or reply because that's the first confirmed engagement HubSpot receives. This inference only occurs when an email goes from 0 opens to 1 open and isn't repeated for subsequent clicks or replies, ensuring engagement metrics remain accurate.
What if I'm getting a 'Someone' notification?
If you send a tracked email to multiple email addresses (including CC and BCC), they all receive the same HubSpot Sales tracking image. HubSpot will still notify you of the email open, but HubSpot may not be able to determine which recipient opened the email.
If you also have data privacy settings turned on in your HubSpot account and a contact does not have a lawful basis for data processing, HubSpot Sales will track the multiple-recipient email, but the notifications will be anonymous. The Recent sales email open date, Recent sales email clicked date, and Last engagement date properties will also not be updated.
Please note: when you receive a 'Someone' notification for an email open or click, HubSpot cannot attribute the corresponding email activity to a specific recipient, so it will not appear in any email activity reporting (e.g., a custom report).
How email click tracking works
Email clicks can be tracked for both marketing emails and tracked one-to-one emails. The behavior and configuration of link tracking depends on the type of email you're sending.
Marketing email clicks
You can turn on link tracking for your marketing emails on the Tracking tab of your marketing email settings. If you've purchased the Brands add-on, you can also manage the domain of the tracked links in your emails. Learn more about configuring your marketing email click tracking settings in this article.
One-to-one email clicks
Subscription required A Sales Hub Starter, Professional, or Enterprise subscription is required to track one-to-one email clicks.
If you have an assigned Sales Hub seat and you send a tracked email from your email client or from a record, you can track clicks on links included in the body of the email. Links are tracked by appending tracking to the end of any hyperlink included in your email. You can see click and open information in your HubSpot activity feed.
Links will appear in the following format in the email the contact receives: http://[xx].na1.hs-sales-engage[xx].com/...
The temporary redirection to the [xx].na1.hs-sales-engage.com domain is necessary for HubSpot to register and track link clicks. The link will automatically redirect to the final URL destination (e.g. www.hubspot.com) when clicked. To use your own domain for one-to-one email click tracking, connect a custom sales and service email tracking domain.
Please note:
- You can connect only one custom sales and service email tracking domain per account.
- To customize the domain for one-to-one email tracking, you must connect your own custom domain. HubSpot system domains are not supported for one-to-one email click tracking domain customization.
- Only hyperlinked, non-URL text will be tracked. For example, tracking will not occur if you type out www.hubspot.com. Even if the text www.hubspot.com is hyperlinked to www.hubspot.com, clicks on the link will not be tracked.
- Clicks cannot be tracked in plain text emails.
(Outlook)
(Gmail)
(Record in HubSpot)
If you want to test link tracking, click the link from an email client and browser that does not have the HubSpot Sales extension installed; otherwise, the click notification may be suppressed. This prevents any notifications triggered by clicks on your own links, but this does not apply to other recipients of your email who may have HubSpot Sales installed.
If you're not receiving any open or click notifications when sending a tracked email from your email inbox, learn how to troubleshoot tracking issues with your extension:
- Troubleshoot the HubSpot Sales Chrome extension
- Troubleshoot the HubSpot Sales Outlook desktop add-in
- Troubleshoot the HubSpot Sales Office 365 add-in
How tracking data is used in HubSpot
HubSpot uses email open and click events to report on email engagement and support other tools that rely on engagement data. How tracking data is used depends on the type of email you send and the HubSpot tools you're using.
The following are a few examples of how tracking data can be used:
- Analyze email engagement: use open and click events to measure metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, unique opens, and unique clicks. Learn more about analyzing marketing email performance and reporting on one-to-one emails.
- Optimize marketing email sends: use open and click activity to support send time optimization, graymail suppression, and A/B testing.
- Automate processes: use email opens and clicks as criteria for workflow enrollment, branches, or subsequent actions.
- Segment and score contacts: use email open and click activity as criteria for active segments, lead scores, and deal scores.
- Update CRM engagement data: use email open and click events to update engagement properties and record activities on contact records.
Impact of turning off email tracking
If email tracking is turned off, HubSpot doesn't collect new open or click events for affected emails. Existing tracking data remains available, but features that depend on new open or click events may have incomplete data or limited functionality.
The following is a non-exhaustive list of features and tools that may be affected.
| Feature or tool | Impact when tracking is turned off |
| Marketing email analytics | Metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, unique opens, and unique clicks may be missing or incomplete. |
| Marketing email health | Email health metrics or recommendations that depend on open or click engagement may be incomplete. |
| Send time optimization | Send time optimization may be less effective when new open or click engagement data isn’t available. Contacts without enough engagement data will receive the email at the beginning of the sending range. |
| Local time zone sending | A contact’s IP timezone may be missing or incomplete when new open or click engagement data isn’t available. This can affect marketing email time zone sending when the IP timezone is used as a fallback. |
| Graymail suppression | Suppression may be less accurate because new open and click engagement won’t be available to determine whether contacts are engaged. |
| A/B tests for marketing emails | A/B tests that determine a winner based on opens or clicks may default to the fallback version as the winning email. |
| Marketing email engagement optimization | Recommendations that depend on open or click engagement may be unavailable, incomplete, or less effective. |
| Sequences | Sequence steps or branches that rely on opens or clicks won't be triggered by new tracking events. |
| Sequence email analytics | Metrics such as opens, clicks, and open/click rates may be missing or incomplete. |
| Workflows and automation | Workflow enrollment criteria, branches, or actions that rely on email opens or clicks won’t be triggered by new tracking events. |
| Workflow email trends | Workflow email performance statistics that rely on opens or clicks may be incomplete. |
| Active segments | Contacts won't enter or leave active segments based on new open or click activity. |
| CRM engagement properties | CRM properties that rely on email open or click events won’t update with new tracking data. |
| Contact timeline | New email open or click activities won't appear on the contact's timeline. Logged emails will still appear separately. |
| Deal scores | Deal score inputs based on buyer engagement may be incomplete when they include email opens or clicks. |
| Lead scoring | Lead scores that use email open or click criteria won’t receive new tracking events for those criteria. |
| Attribution reporting | Marketing email click events from HubSpot click tracking won’t be available for attribution reports that rely on those interactions. Source and UTM-based attribution may still apply where configured. |
Analyze email tracking
You can review and analyze trends in your email performance using custom reports or prebuilt reports in the report library:
- To build your own report, use the custom report builder and select the data sources Sales email or Marketing email.
- For marketing emails, you can analyze delivery rates and engagement from the email index page.
In addition to building your own custom reports, you can access prebuilt reports on email performance:
