How to Integrate HubSpot with Front

What actually connects (and what stays in HubSpot)

Before touching a setting, it helps to separate the two mechanisms, because they have different capabilities, different plan requirements, and different failure modes. Per Front's guide to enabling the HubSpot integration, the pieces are:

• The sidebar plugin. This lives in Front's app switcher next to each conversation and lets you "display, create, and edit customer records from your HubSpot CRM that match the open message in Front" — contacts, companies, deals, and engagements (notes, tasks). Because the plugin talks to HubSpot live, edits you make here do write back to HubSpot. It's available on every Front plan.
• The data sync. Separately, Front can copy HubSpot contacts into Front contacts and HubSpot companies into Front accounts. This is a one-way sync — HubSpot is the source of truth, Front is the mirror. It requires the Professional plan or above, per Front's contacts sync documentation.

The distinction matters: the plugin is bidirectional at the record level (you can edit a deal from Front and it lands in HubSpot); the sync is strictly one-directional. Most bidirectional expectations break because people assume the sync behaves like the plugin. It doesn't.

Step 1 — Enable the HubSpot app in Front

The connect flow starts in Front's App Store, not in HubSpot.

1. Click the gear icon to open Settings, then go to Company settings.
2. Open the App Store from the left menu.
3. Find HubSpot in the list (it's in the CRM & Ecommerce category), and click See details.
4. On the overview page, click Enable app and authenticate with your HubSpot account via OAuth.

Enabling the app switches on the sidebar plugin immediately. Now, when a conversation matches a HubSpot contact by email, agents see that contact's HubSpot record — company, deals, recent engagements — in the app panel, and can create or edit records without leaving Front. This is the half of the integration that most support and sales teams get value from first, and it works on any plan.

Step 2 — Turn on the contacts sync

If you want HubSpot contacts to populate Front's own contact directory (so they're searchable, routable, and usable in rules even without an open HubSpot record), enable the contacts sync. Per Front's contacts sync guide, you must be a workspace or company admin to set this up.

1. From the HubSpot app settings, open the contacts sync configuration.
2. Choose which HubSpot contact fields to sync and map each to a corresponding Front field. Front automatically merges HubSpot's separate First name and Last name into a single Name field.
3. Confirm the field mapping and start the sync.

A few hard constraints to plan around, straight from Front's documentation:

• Contacts need at least an email or phone number to sync — records without either are skipped.
• Front supports a maximum of 1M contacts.
• Deletes don't propagate. "If a contact is deleted in HubSpot, the contact will stop syncing to Front but the Front contact will not be deleted." You'll clean those up manually.
• Duplicates are skipped, not merged. If an email or phone already exists in Front linked to a different HubSpot contact, the sync skips that record and logs an error.

Step 3 — Turn on the companies sync

Company (account) sync works the same way and carries the same one-way, HubSpot-to-front direction. Per Front's companies sync documentation, "companies are synced one-way from HubSpot to Front," matched to Front accounts via an external ID so updates land on the right record over time.

1. Open the companies sync settings under the HubSpot app.
2. Map HubSpot company fields to Front account fields. Front's compatibility table covers the common types — single line text, multi-line text, dropdown, and date picker fields map cleanly.
3. Start the sync.

Two numbers to know: Front supports a maximum of 500k companies/accounts, and companies are automatically re-synced roughly every 24 hours to stay current, with a manual re-sync available whenever you can't wait for the next cycle. That 24-hour cadence is fine for firmographic data that rarely changes hour to hour — but it's exactly why a company field you edit in HubSpot at 9am may not appear in Front until the next day unless you trigger a manual refresh.

Plugin vs. sync — which does what

Keeping the two mechanisms straight prevents most integration surprises. Here's the decision table.

If you only need context on the conversation, the plugin alone is enough. Turn on the sync when you want HubSpot data to drive Front behavior — assignment rules that route by account, search across your full CRM contact list, or AI automation that reads account attributes.

The honest limits — and where bidirectional expectations break

The native Front–HubSpot integration is genuinely good at what it's built for: giving agents CRM context without a tab-switch, and keeping Front's directory populated from HubSpot. But it's worth being clear-eyed about the edges.

The sync is one-way, full stop. Changes you make to a synced Front contact or account do not travel back to HubSpot. Only edits made through the plugin (which talks to HubSpot's live API) write back. Teams that expect a true two-way CRM mirror — where a rep updating a lifecycle stage in Front updates HubSpot — will be disappointed, because that's not what the sync is.

Freshness is uneven. Contact updates flow quickly, but companies ride the ~24-hour cadence unless you manually re-sync, per Front's companies sync guide. Deletes never propagate. And only email messages log back to HubSpot as activities — SMS, social messages, and other channel types don't, so your HubSpot activity timeline is an incomplete picture of the conversation.

Deep config needs both accounts. Field mapping, sync scope, and object relationships are configured after you enable the app, and getting HubSpot custom objects to surface requires them to have relationships to standard objects in HubSpot — work you do on the HubSpot side, not in Front. The App Store overview page (shown above) is just the front door; the real configuration happens once you're authenticated into both platforms.

None of that makes the integration bad — it makes it a data-presentation integration, not a reasoning one. It can put a HubSpot deal in front of an agent, but it can't read the customer's actual question and decide what to do about it. That's a different job.

Where an AI layer picks up

Front's HubSpot integration answers "who is this customer?" It doesn't answer "what should we do about this conversation?" That's the seam an AI agent layer fills — and the broader category of AI agents for customer service exists for exactly this reasoning work.

Macha is one such layer. It runs on top of the Front you already use through a live connector — it doesn't replace Front, your shared inboxes, or your HubSpot integration. You keep HubSpot feeding CRM context into the sidebar and Front's directory; Macha's agent then reads this conversation, understands intent rather than keywords, and drafts or sends a grounded reply. Because a Macha custom tool can turn a REST API into something the agent calls, the agent can pull a customer's live plan, deal stage, or order status at the moment it answers — closing the exact gap the 24-hour sync leaves open. The native integration shows the deal; the agent uses it. If you want the mechanics, connecting Front to Macha to route conversations to AI walks through it, Macha's credits are consumed per AI action rather than per resolution, and the Macha–Front connector covers the setup. For how integrations fit the wider Front shared inbox model, start there.

FAQ

How do I connect HubSpot to Front? Open Settings (gear) → Company settings → App Store, find HubSpot, click See details → Enable app, and authenticate with HubSpot. Enabling switches on the sidebar plugin immediately; the contacts and companies sync are configured separately afterward and require the Professional plan or above.

Is the Front HubSpot sync one-way or two-way? The data sync is one-way — HubSpot to Front only. Front copies HubSpot contacts and companies into its own directory, but edits to those synced records don't travel back to HubSpot. The sidebar plugin is different: edits you make to a record through the plugin write back to HubSpot live.

How often does the Front HubSpot integration sync? Contact updates flow near-real-time, while companies/accounts are automatically re-synced roughly every 24 hours, with a manual re-sync available at any time. Plan for firmographic data to potentially lag a day unless you trigger a manual refresh.

What are the sync limits? Front supports up to 1M contacts and 500k companies/accounts. Contacts must have at least an email or phone number to sync, deleted HubSpot contacts stop syncing but aren't deleted in Front, and duplicate email/phone matches are skipped with a logged error.

Can I add AI on top of the Front HubSpot integration? Yes. An AI agent layer like Macha connects to Front as a live connector alongside your HubSpot integration. HubSpot keeps supplying CRM context; the agent reads the routed conversation, understands intent, and drafts or sends a grounded reply — using the customer's live data through a custom tool.

Ready to turn "CRM context in the sidebar" into "actually answered"? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Front in minutes.