What action options does Valid Email Checker offer for HubSpot? (Tag / Unsubscribe / Delete)

When you pick a HubSpot list and switch the Valid Email Checker modal to Clean List Automatically, three actions become available per result category. The dropdown labels read Keep, Unsubscribe, and Delete. The category rows are the same across every integration (Invalid, Disposable, Catch-all, Unknown, Risky). What changes is what each action does inside HubSpot. The full integration architecture lives in how the HubSpot integration works.

How each action behaves in HubSpot

• Keep — VEC writes nothing back. The contact stays exactly as HubSpot had them. All properties, deal associations, ticket history, and activity timeline are untouched. Pick this when you want a results report without changing HubSpot data.
• Unsubscribe — VEC calls the HubSpot API to set the contact to Unsubscribed for marketing email. The contact remains in HubSpot with every property, deal link, and ticket intact. They stop receiving marketing emails but can still receive transactional sends, depending on your HubSpot configuration.
• Delete — VEC removes the contact from HubSpot entirely. Deal and ticket associations are kept (HubSpot retains those independently), but the contact record itself is gone.

Default settings (HubSpot-specific)

HubSpot's defaults match every other non-ConvertKit integration. Only the two unambiguously bad categories are enabled out of the box; the more nuanced categories stay disabled so a first-time run never silently modifies large chunks of contacts.

Click Use Recommended Settings in the modal to snap back to these defaults whenever you want.

What survives Unsubscribe in HubSpot

• Contact properties (name, company, phone, every custom property) — preserved.
• Deal associations — fully retained. HubSpot stores deal-to-contact links separately.
• Ticket history — preserved for customer support continuity.
• Activity timeline — every meeting, call, and email event remains on the contact record.
• Workflow membership — unsubscribed contacts stay in workflows but email steps are skipped.

Why the title says Tag and the UI says Keep

Tag/Unsubscribe/Delete is industry shorthand. Valid Email Checker uses Keep in the modal because that label more honestly describes what happens — nothing. Some vendors silently tag every contact with their results regardless of category; VEC leaves your HubSpot data alone unless you explicitly choose Unsubscribe or Delete on a specific category.

Admin permissions matter for write actions

Unsubscribe and Delete both require the HubSpot OAuth grant to include write scope on contacts. If you connected with an Admin role and later got downgraded to a non-Admin role, the cleanup actions may fail. The verification still completes, but cleanup writes will error. Reconnect with an Admin-or-higher account to restore full functionality.

The Risky category in HubSpot

Risky bundles risky, spamtrap, and role_account from the engine. Spam traps damage HubSpot sender reputation quickly. Enabling Risky with Unsubscribe is the safe middle ground — your reputation is protected, and the audit trail (deal links, activity, properties) stays intact.