HubSpot Subscription Types: What They Are and How to Set Them Up

Quick answer: A HubSpot subscription type is a category of email, such as a newsletter, product updates, or special offers, that a contact can opt into or out of. Every marketing email you send from HubSpot has to be assigned to one. Subscription types let a contact stop one kind of email without unsubscribing from everything, and they give HubSpot the record of who agreed to receive what. You create them under Settings > Marketing > Email > Subscription Types.

What is a Subscription Type?

You can think of subscription types as the categories of email you send to your subscribers. Product Information, Blog Updates, News, or Marketing Offers are just a few examples of subscription types within HubSpot.

We’ll get into the details and benefits of each of these, as well as how to set up your own custom subscription types, in just a bit.

Lists vs. Subscription Types

In the world of HubSpot, lists and subscription types are two different beasts, but they work together to make your email marketing game strong. Think of lists as your audience groups. They're dynamic, changing as your contacts move through different stages or interact with your content in various ways. You can slice and dice your contacts into lists based on any criteria you fancy, like lifecycle stage, form submissions, or any other contact property.

Now, enter subscription types. These are the flavors of emails you send out to your subscribers. They're like the different sections of a newspaper - Product Information, Blog Updates, News, Marketing Offers, you name it. By using subscription types, you're giving your audience the power to pick and choose the content they want to hear about.

So, in a nutshell, while lists are all about who you're talking to, subscription types are all about what you're talking about. They're two sides of the same coin, helping you deliver a more personalized and targeted email marketing experience.

How Subscription Types Handle Consent and GDPR

Subscription types are also how HubSpot keeps track of who has agreed to hear from you. HubSpot gives you the tools for this, but it isn't a substitute for legal advice. You're still responsible for how you collect consent.

If you turn on HubSpot's data privacy settings, every contact has one of three statuses for each subscription type:

1. Opted in: Contacts who have asked to receive this type of email.
2. Opted out: Contacts who have unsubscribed from this type. HubSpot won't send it to them.
3. Not opted in or out: The default. The contact hasn't told you either way.

With data privacy settings on, HubSpot also asks for a legal basis when you subscribe a contact, and you can switch on Limit emails to contacts with a subscription so marketing email only goes to contacts who have opted in.

If you don't turn on data privacy settings, things are simpler (and less clear). A contact who hasn't opted out is treated the same as one who has opted in.

Why should you offer different subscription types?

Every email you send from HubSpot needs to be categorized within a subscription type. Of course, you can always have a singular subscription type within your HubSpot account, and send all your email communications to one general email list. HubSpot sets you up with the default email subscription types of “One to One” and “Marketing Information.”

Adding different subscription types allows users to tailor the information they want to receive from you.

However, you’ll find across the board of digital marketing that customization and segmentation pretty much always win.

When you segment your email subscription types within HubSpot, you give your audience the option of how they want to hear from you, rather than just giving them an On/Off switch of receiving emails from you, or not. Maybe someone wants to know when you have a new product out, but doesn’t need to hear about your process, or if your business was recently in the news.

Maybe there’s another person who is a super fan of your brand and wants to know the entire process of your business, its back story, its growth, and every new product or offer.

There is a way to please both of these subscribers simultaneously without ever changing your email content or frequency. All you need to do is organize your email offerings into subscription types so that your subscribers can choose which types of emails they receive.

Subscription Types Give Agency to Users

There’s a secondary benefit to offering multiple subscriptions: agency.

Offering multiple subscription types allows users to choose what type of emails they want to receive--perhaps offering an alternative to every email marketer's worst fear: an unsubscribe.

Having multiple subscription types allows you to avoid mass unsubscribes and puts the power of what subscriptions people like in their hands.

Subscription Types vs. Unsubscribing From All Email

These are two different things in HubSpot, and the difference is the whole reason subscription types are worth setting up.

• Opting out of one subscription type stops that category only. HubSpot creates a contact property for each type, named “Opted out of email: [subscription type],” and sets it to Yes. The contact still gets your other types.
• Unsubscribing from all email sets the contact's “Unsubscribed from all email” property to true. HubSpot's email tools won't send marketing email to that contact at all.

If you only have one subscription type, every unsubscribe is effectively an unsubscribe from everything. With three or four well-named types, a contact who's tired of your promotions can drop those and keep your newsletter.

Types of Subscriptions in HubSpot

First, let’s get into the different subscription types you might offer, and how to implement them into your inbound marketing strategy with HubSpot.

When organizing and naming your email campaigns into subscription types, it’s helpful to think of two different perspectives. Internally, your HubSpot subscription types should be organized in a way that reflects how you’ve segmented your audience. Externally, your titles and descriptions within each type are visible to your subscribers whenever they go to manage their email preferences. So the titles and descriptions that you input should be informative and easy to understand for your subscribers as well.

Newsletters

A “newsletter” subscription type is pretty self-explanatory, but to keep your subscriber’s point of view in mind, it is helpful to provide a title that is more descriptive for them so they can manage their email preferences easily. If you only have one newsletter offering, adding the frequency into the title can help organize your own dashboard, while setting expectations for the subscriber as well, such as “Monthly Newsletter” or “Quarterly Newsletter.”

Newsletters are a great way to stay connected with your audience regularly. Quantity and frequency matter less in this category than consistency. Establish a schedule (and an expectation with your audience), and stick to it.

Product Updates

Another type of subscription that could be available to your subscribers is Product Updates. This might also include limited offers, product updates, private launches (or presales for audience members), or just announcements when a new product or service is released.

You can think of this subscriber as someone who is interested in your brand, and wants to keep a connection with you, but only wants to hear from you when things are relevant to them (i.e. new products). These subscribers likely don’t want to be sold or told about the same things.

Whatever content you choose to include in this subscription type should be listed in the type’s description to help subscribers make informed decisions about their email preferences, and to keep your email campaigns organized and consistent.

Special Offers

Depending on the kind of business you have, and the frequency of your special offers, you can segment your promotional emails into a separate subscription type. This could include sale announcements, member-only offers, coupon codes, or limited offers.

Industry News

Industry news subscription types are great for businesses in the lines of services, coaching, books, or specialized trades. Having a round-up of news around your industry could include new content from your own website, along with links and articles that are helpful to your subscribers.

Industry news and recent events is a popular subscription type.

It might feel weird to send a newsletter that links out to websites other than your own, but there is an upside in establishing a regular, informative, and genuinely helpful resource to your customers or clients.

By becoming a source for their news (and doing the work of filtering out irrelevant or redundant content), your audience will be opening your emails regularly and more frequently than if you were just talking about your own business in every communication with them. This established relationship can make all the difference for when you do make a call-to-action. You are constantly communicating with a more-than-warm audience who expects to hear from you, and who trusts you for information.

Other Subscription Types

Other types of subscriptions might be more applicable to your specific business like Event Subscriptions, specific Blog Subscriptions, or specific service subscriptions. Subscription types are designed to help you send targeted content to subscribers who want to hear from you, so they can be organized and customized however works best for your business and your subscribers.

How It Works: Setting Up Subscription Types in HubSpot

Custom subscription types are available on Marketing Hub Starter, Professional, and Enterprise, and on Content Hub Professional and Enterprise. Here’s how to create one, checked against HubSpot’s documentation in November 2026:

1. Click the settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar, go to Marketing > Email.
3. Click the Subscription Types tab.
4. Click Create subscription type and fill in the panel:
   1. Language
   2. Subscription name. Your subscribers will see this, so name it for them.
   3. Description of the emails this type will carry
   4. Purpose of subscription, if you have data privacy settings turned on
   5. Method of communication: choose Email
5. Check the Preview, then click Create.

Your new subscription type will appear on your subscription preferences page.

HubSpot allows up to 1,000 subscription types, but most companies need only a handful.

If there are subscription types that you’ve previously created but don’t use, or if you no longer want to offer that type of subscription, you can archive it from the Actions dropdown. An archived type no longer appears on your subscription preferences page.

How to Customize Your Email Subscriptions

A few settings are worth a look once your types exist:

1. Order. Drag subscription types into the order you want subscribers to see them. Put the one you most want people to keep at the top.
2. Language. Each subscription type has a language, so you can offer a version for each audience you email.
3. Edits. Use Actions > Edit to tighten a name or description. Renaming a type also renames its “Opted out of email” contact property.

The Subscription Preferences Page

Every marketing email from HubSpot includes a link to your subscription preferences page. That's where a contact sees your subscription types, with the names and descriptions you wrote, and chooses which to keep. It's the only place most subscribers will ever read those descriptions, so write them the way you'd explain the email to a customer.

How to Resubscribe a Contact in HubSpot

Sometimes a contact opts out by mistake, or asks to be added back. To resubscribe them:

1. Open the contact record and find Communication subscriptions, then click View subscriptions.
2. Hover over the subscription type and click Resubscribe (or Subscribe if they've never stated a preference).
3. If data privacy settings are on, select a legal basis and enter an explanation of the contact's consent.
4. Click Save.

Two limits to know. A contact who opted out themselves can't be resubscribed in bulk or by a workflow. You have to do it from their individual record. And only resubscribe someone who has actually asked you to. An opt-out is a request, and overriding it without consent is how sender reputations get damaged.

How Many Subscription Types Should You Have?

HubSpot allows up to 1,000. You almost certainly need three to five.

Too few doesn’t allow for targeting: with one type, a contact's only choice is everything or nothing. Too many gives subscribers a wall of checkboxes when they go to manage their preferences, and most will just unsubscribe from all of it.

The right number depends on how many kinds of quality content you can send on a regular basis. If you can't name what a subscriber would get from a type and how often, it shouldn't be a type yet. The number of subscription types matters less than the quality of content and value subscribers receive from each one.

Subscription Types and Your Business

Subscription types within HubSpot can be a useful tool to segment your email marketing strategy and give your subscribers a customized experience of your business. Explore, experiment, and implement whatever fits you and your audience best.

Don’t have the time? Vaulted is a Gold HubSpot Solutions Partner based in Raleigh, North Carolina. We set up and clean up HubSpot email programs for B2B companies, including subscription types, consent settings, and the lists behind them. See our HubSpot services, or contact us for a free consultation.