If you’ve ever opened your HubSpot portal and seen dozens of junk contacts from spam bots, you know how frustrating it is. These submissions not only waste time but also mess up your reports, workflows, and contact lists.
The good news? HubSpot gives you simple but powerful ways to stop bots in their tracks. In this post, we’ll walk through how to set up form strategies, hidden fields, and workflows to keep your CRM clean.
Spam bots don’t just clutter your contact database; they trigger workflows, create false deals, notify your sales team, and ultimately waste valuable time. Worse, they skew reporting, making it harder to make good decisions based on real data.
Conventional wisdom says “keep forms short for better conversions.” But when it comes to bottom-of-funnel offers like demos or quotes, adding a few extra fields can help weed out unqualified or spammy submissions. A real prospect won’t hesitate to provide details about their business.
One of HubSpot’s best tricks is to add a hidden field - sometimes called a honeypot. Bots detect and fill every field on a form, even if it’s hidden. By creating a custom property (like “Honeypot Catch”) and adding it as a hidden field, you can instantly tell if a bot submitted a form.
If the hidden field is populated, it’s spam.
If it’s empty, it’s a real human.
Once the honeypot is in place, build a workflow in HubSpot:
Trigger: Form submission
Branch: Check if “Honeypot Catch” is known
If spam: Delete the contact and prevent company creation.
If not spam, continue with your normal process (assign lead, create deal, send follow-up email, etc.).
This keeps your CRM tidy, prevents junk deals, and protects reporting accuracy.
Saves Time: No more wasted resources on fake contacts
Improves Reporting: Cleaner data means better decisions
Protects Your Team: Sales and marketing stay focused on real leads
Spam bots aren’t going away anytime soon. But with HubSpot’s forms, hidden fields, and workflows, you can outsmart them and keep your CRM clean.
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At The Gist Inbound, we help businesses set up HubSpot the right way, from automation like this to full CRM builds and inbound marketing strategies. If you want to scale your growth without adding more to your plate, let’s talk.