Use lifecycle stages
Last updated: June 6, 2022
Applies to:
All products and plans |
Categorize your contacts and companies based on where they are in your marketing and sales processes. Using the Lifecycle stage property enables your team to determine where a specific contact or company is in your processes, and to understand better how leads are handed off between marketing and sales.
Lifecycle stages
Lifecycle stages are generally used to track how contacts or companies move forward in your process. Default automatic updates to the lifecycle stage property will only move the stage forward (e.g., no value to Subscriber, Subscriber to Opportunity, etc.). Learn more about how to manually update lifecycle stage values.
The default Lifecycle stage property contains the following stages as options in sequential order:

- Subscriber: a contact who has opted in to hear more from you by signing up for your blog or newsletter. This is automatically set by HubSpot when a contact converts on a blog subscription form, visits your website via a link in a marketing email, or is manually created either in the contacts index page, or in the contact profiles sidebar of the HubSpot Sales extension for Chrome, Office 365, or Outlook.
- Lead: a contact or company who has converted on your website or through some other interaction with your organization beyond a subscription sign up. This is automatically set by HubSpot when a contact converts on a lead form, is synced to HubSpot from Salesforce, or is identified via the HubSpot tracking code API.
- Marketing Qualified Lead: a contact or company that your marketing team has qualified as ready for the sales team.
- Sales Qualified Lead: a contact or company that your sales team has qualified as a potential customer.
- Opportunity: a contact or company who is associated with a deal (e.g., they're involved in a potential deal with your organization). If you've selected to Sync lifecycle stages in your settings, this is automatically set by HubSpot when a contact or company is associated with an open deal.
- Customer: a contact or company with at least one closed deal. If you've selected to Sync lifecycle stages in your settings, this is automatically set by HubSpot when at least one deal associated with the contact or company is set to Closed Won.
- Evangelist: a customer who has advocated for your organization.
- Other: a contact or company who does not fit any of the above stages.
Since certain lifecycle stages are updated automatically by HubSpot, the property’s options cannot be edited.
Update a record's lifecycle stage
The default lifecycle stage for a new contact or company is determined by how they were created, but you can update the Lifecycle stage property manually, or set up your own automatic triggers and criteria. To update the Lifecycle stage property, you can do the following:
- Manually update the Lifecycle stage property for an individual contact or company.
- Bulk update the lifecycle stage of your contacts or companies from an index page.
- Import a Lifecycle stage column to update the Lifecycle stage property for a list of contacts or companies. If you import new records and don’t set their lifecycle stage, the lifecycle stage will be blank until it is set automatically by HubSpot if certain actions are completed.
- Set up automatic syncing of lifecycle stages between contact, company, and deal records.
- Use the Set [contact/company] property value action in a chatflow or the Set a property value action in a workflow (Professional or Enterprise accounts only).
- Set the lifecycle stage within certain integrated apps that sync the Lifecycle stage property, such as the HubSpot-Salesforce integration.
You can see the source of an update in the Lifecycle stage property history.
Please note:
- Imports, forms, and the Set a property value action in a chatflow or workflow can only set a record's default Lifecycle stage property forward. To set the lifecycle stage backward via these tools, you will first need to clear the record's existing lifecycle stage value. The value can be cleared manually, or may be automatically cleared via a workflow or an integration that syncs contact data.
- If you manually set a lifecycle stage to an earlier value, the Became a [lifecycle stage] date property corresponding to the greater value will be cleared.
Monitor lifecycle stages
The Lifecycle stage property can be used to segment your records when creating a list or a saved view. You can also use reports in your HubSpot account to see where contacts are in your processes and how they have moved between the lifecycle stages. Users with reports permissions in a Professional or Enterprise account can create custom funnel reports.
Lead Status
The Lead Status property describes the sub-stages within a Sales Qualified Lead lifecycle stage. The default Lead Status options are:- New
- Open
- In Progress
- Open Deal
- Unqualified
- Attempted to Contact
- Connected
- Bad Timing
Thank you for your feedback, it means a lot to us.
Related content
-
Import one object
You can import files to create and update HubSpot records in bulk. This article explains how to import a...
Knowledge Base -
Create and edit properties
Properties are fields that store information on HubSpot records. For example, you can use the City company...
Knowledge Base -
Review and troubleshoot import errors
When importing records into HubSpot, you may encounter errors. Below, learn how to resolve errors detected...
Knowledge Base