Struggling With Ongoing Spam Submission Issues + Lack of Clarity on Available Solutions

[LSerrato]

I’m hoping to get some productive guidance from this community because I’m hitting a wall.

I just spent over an hour on a call with HubSpot Support trying to address something that should be a straightforward fix: preventing spam form submissions. Instead, I ended up in a very confusing loop of being instructed to build custom properties, filters, and workflows — none of which ultimately solved the issue.

What’s even more frustrating is that I’ve raised concerns about spam multiple times over the past few months, yet no one mentioned that HubSpot has a beta feature specifically designed to reduce spam submissions. That lack of clarity has cost a lot of time and unnecessary effort.

As a marketing leader without an internal dev or ops team to rely on, I’m often left trying to navigate technical solutions on my own. My goal isn’t to vent, but rather to understand:

• Is anyone else experiencing this level of complexity around spam prevention?
• Has anyone used the spam‑prevention beta feature successfully?
• Are there best practices, configurations, or workflow setups that have worked well for you?
• Is there a simpler, more reliable path I might be missing?

Any insights, lessons learned, or examples would be incredibly helpful. I want to ensure we’re using HubSpot effectively — and not over‑engineering something that should be much simpler.

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can share.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @LSerrato,

Could you provide more details as to which spam issue exactly you are facing? What type of spam submissions are you receiving? What did HubSpot support instruct you to setup?

In general, the recent wave of spam submissions with contacts that have alphanumeric first and last names was solved in the portals that I manage through this beta: https://app-eu1.hubspot.com/l/product-updates/?rollout=224926

On top of that, these recommendations still apply: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/forms/prevent-spam-form-submissions

If you have completed all of these steps and are still facing issues, can you please share some examples of spam submissions you're receiving?

I have also answered questions around spam here before: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Lead-Capture-Tools/Forms-and-Spam-Submissions/m-p/1188301/highlight...

Best regards

[LSerrato]

Happy to provide clarity: 
Typical marketing teams do not have a devops person dedicated to the build-out of Hubspot. So, like me, often times in the B2B space the goal is to drive form fills. With the rise of AI spam bots have increased capabilties to double opt-in and work around things like CAPTCHA. 
My frustration is not with the Beta tool itself, that was overdue, but rather with the systems outside of Beta to mark spam (without building a complex workflow) and an improved supression list. 
For instance, starting with the "mark spam", I would like to see a feature that allows admins to categorize obvious spam - or nefarious phishing attempts with greater ease. We certainly do get a large amount of phishing form fills. 
Secondly, regarding the supression list, I would like to see an option that is 2-fold. One where we do want to allow acceptable free emails (like Google) through while suppressing all others. Currently, there is only 1- built in option that is all encompassing. I'm recommending making that a 2-tier built-in, so widely-used acceptable emails are not caught in filters. Perhaps even adding logic that can identify "gibberish" within Gmail accounts. 
I mentioned Google specifically as many businesses use this and Google Workspace as a cost effective means to operate. 
The marketing team here, has followed most of the recommendations as provided above. However, as technology evolves with disruptors like AI, I would hope solutions also evolve as I know Hubspot is constantly rolling out new products. 

[Victor_Becerra]

Thank you so much for your post @LSerrato 

I'm tagging here some subject matter experts from our community who can help you find a solution

Hi @ArisudanTiwari @AGupta58 @DilshadShaikh do you have any insights for this issue?

Thanks in advance!

Best, Victor