What HubSpot Can Restore After Data Loss, and What It Cannot

The message usually arrives on a Monday morning. Someone ran a cleanup on Friday, or an import mapped the wrong column, or two companies were merged that should never have been. The question is always the same: can HubSpot put it back?

The honest answer is "it depends on what was lost, how long ago, and who is asking." HubSpot has a different restore tool for almost every kind of data, each with its own time limit and its own permission. Finding that out under pressure costs time you may not have, because several of those windows are short.

The tools also hide in different places. Deleted records sit in a restore view on each object's index page. Bulk changes roll back from object settings. Deleted properties have their own archive tab. Files live in a separate trash. And some losses have no restore button at all, which is worth knowing before Friday's cleanup rather than after it. This page puts all of it in one table, so you can print it beforehand.

I checked every row against HubSpot's own knowledge base on 2 November 2026. HubSpot changes these tools often, so follow the source link before you act on a row.

The recovery table: what comes back, for how long, and who can do it

What was lost	Can HubSpot restore it?	Time limit	Who can restore it	Plans	Source
Deleted records (contacts, companies, custom objects and other HubSpot-defined objects)	Yes, from the restore records tool, up to 10,000 records at a time	90 days	Users with Account access and Add and edit users permissions	All	Restore deleted records
Permanently deleted contacts (the option formerly called GDPR delete)	No	None	Nobody	All	Delete CRM records
Merged records	No. HubSpot says "It's not possible to unmerge records."	None	Nobody	All	Merge records
Property values changed in bulk (by users, imports, integrations or workflows)	Yes, with Restore CRM changes	14 days	Super Admins	Starter, Professional, Enterprise	Restore CRM changes
Bulk changes made by one workflow	Yes, with restore workflow CRM property changes	14 days	Super Admins	Enterprise	Restore workflow CRM property changes
A single value you just edited by hand	Yes, with the undo option, but not for changes from workflows, the API or connected apps	"a short period after a property value change"	Not stated	Not stated	Undo property value changes
Older values on a property	Partly, by exporting property history and importing the old values	Last 45 revisions on contacts, 20 on other objects	Users with CRM Export and Edit All permissions for the object	All	Export property history
Archived properties	Yes, from the Archived tab	90 days	Users with Edit property settings	All	Organise and export properties
Deleted activities (notes, calls, meetings, tasks)	Yes	90 days	Users with Add and edit users, or Super Admins	All	Restore deleted activities
Deleted workflows	Yes, as a new, inactive workflow without its history or past versions	90 days	Users with Workflows permissions	Professional, Enterprise (the workflows tool)	Delete and restore workflows
Deleted marketing emails	Yes, with performance data	90 days	Super Admins or users with Account Access	All	Restore deleted emails
Deleted segments (lists)	Yes, with the same ID	90 days	Users with Edit Segment permissions	All	Edit, use or delete segments
Deleted files	Yes	30 days	Users with Files permissions	All	Archive, delete or restore files
Forms, sales documents and other content in the files trash	No	None	Nobody	All	Archive, delete or restore files
Records created by a bad import	Yes, delete them from the import's page	Not stated	Not stated	All	View and analyse past imports
Values overwritten by a bad import	Not by deleting. Use Restore CRM changes (source: Import) or reimport the old values	14 days for Restore CRM changes	Super Admins	Starter, Professional, Enterprise	Past imports, Restore CRM changes

Two details in that table catch people out.

First, a restored contact is not always whole. HubSpot's own wording is "When you restore a contact, some of the data associated with them will still be lost." A contact also cannot be restored at all if an active contact already uses the same email address. Change or remove that email first.

Second, restored items often need work afterwards. A restored workflow comes back switched off. A restored marketing email has to be added back to its workflows by hand, and HubSpot says "Emails that were scheduled when deleted need to be manually scheduled again."

The three losses HubSpot cannot undo

Merges. This is the one I see most often, because merging feels like tidying. HubSpot's article is blunt: "once you've merged two records, it is not possible to unmerge them." The merged record gets a new record ID. The secondary record leaves all static segments and every workflow it was in. Any integration or spreadsheet that stored the old IDs now points at nothing. For contacts and companies, HubSpot's only route is to create a new record with the merged email addresses or domain names. If you are cleaning duplicates at scale, read how merges break associations before you start.

Permanent deletions. When a user chooses permanent deletion, the record skips the recycle bin. HubSpot says these records are "permanently deleted immediately for users" and may take up to 30 days to be purged from its systems. That delay exists for privacy law. It does not give you a restore window.

Anything past its window. After 90 days a deleted record is gone. HubSpot's wording is "After 90 days, the contact and data is deleted and cannot be recovered." If the same person comes back later, they arrive as a new record without their history.

There is a quieter fourth limit. Property history is not unlimited. HubSpot keeps "up to 45 revisions" for contact properties and "up to 20 revisions" for company, deal, ticket and custom object properties, counting changes from the API as well. A property that a busy integration rewrites daily can lose the value you need within weeks. My guide to exporting property history covers the export itself.

Undoing a bad bulk change within 14 days

For most Monday-morning problems, the tool you want is Restore CRM changes. It rolls records "back to a previous point within the last 14 days". You can filter by the source of the change: manual edits by users, an import file, an installed integration, or a workflow. It covers contacts, companies, deals, tickets, calls, products, leads, marketing events, orders, tasks and custom objects. It needs Super Admin permissions. It does not bring back deleted records. For those, HubSpot points you to the recycle bin or an import.

Enterprise accounts have a second, narrower tool: restore workflow CRM property changes. It undoes the records a single workflow deleted, created or modified, again within 14 days. It ignores changes made by custom-coded actions. HubSpot also recommends turning the workflow off first, so it does not keep making the same change while you restore.

If you are past 14 days, the fallback is the manual route. Export the property's history and filter it to the date of the incident. Then import the next most recent value against each record ID. It is slow, and it only works while the old value is still within the revision limit.

HubSpot's own backup and audit tools

Many teams search for a HubSpot backup without knowing HubSpot has one. The back up CRM data tool saves a copy of records and property values outside HubSpot as a .zip file of CSVs, one per object. It covers contacts, companies, deals, tickets, custom objects, products, calls, conversations and tasks (Back up CRM data). The limits are worth knowing before you rely on it:

• Starter and Professional accounts can back up once a week. Enterprise accounts can back up once every 24 hours and schedule recurring backups weekly or every two weeks.
• "Associations and activity data aren't included." A backup tells you what a record looked like, not what it was connected to.
• Only Super Admins can create one, and you have 14 days to download it.
• Sensitive Data properties are included, so the file needs the same protection as the portal itself.

HubSpot's article does not describe a one-click restore from this backup. Getting data back means an import.

The audit log answers the other question after an incident: who did it (View and export account activity history). It needs Super Admin permissions. It "only records HubSpot-user based actions", so a change from a form submission or an integration will not show there. Login history and security activity show the last 30 days by default, and security actions can be reviewed for the last year. For the "what if we get hacked" scenario, this is where you would start, alongside two-factor authentication for every user (account security best practices).

Sandboxes (Enterprise only) are for testing changes "without affecting your live account". They copy at most your 5,000 most recently updated contacts if you ask them to, so they are not a backup (Create a sandbox).

Third-party backup apps fill the gap past 90 days and add associations or daily snapshots. Most of the pages ranking for "HubSpot backup" are written by those vendors. Before you buy, ask each one two questions: does a restored record keep its original record ID, and does it come back with its associations? The answer decides whether your integrations still work after a restore.

Before it happens: a checklist

Recovery is easier when the damage is small and found early. This is the list I would run through with any team that has more than a few people editing data.

1. Limit bulk delete. The Bulk delete permission lets a user "bulk delete contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and tasks." Give it to the few people who need it. Users without it can still delete single records (user permissions guide).
2. Limit merge and import. Merges cannot be undone and need the Merge records permission (Merge records). The Import permission lets a user "import CRM records in bulk", so keep that list short too.
3. Turn on export approval. The Export permission has a setting for exporting without approval and one for approving other users' exports. Use it if contact data leaving the portal worries you more than data being deleted.
4. Know who your Super Admins are. Restore CRM changes, workflow restores and backups all need one. If your only Super Admin is on holiday, nobody can roll back.
5. Take a backup before every big change. Run the backup tool before a large import, a migration or a cleanup. On Starter and Professional you get one a week, so plan big changes around it.
6. Check imports on the same day. The import page lets you download the original file for six months. Compare a sample of updated records against it while you are still inside the 14-day window.
7. Export property history for critical fields. Lifecycle stage, owner and deal stage change often enough to hit the revision limit. Export their history on a schedule, as part of your data governance policy.
8. Watch for sudden shifts. A bad import rarely announces itself. A regular data quality audit catches drops in fill rates and jumps in duplicates. PortalPilot's Trends view, on paid plans, shows when health scores move between two analyses, which is one way to notice a change you did not plan. It does not back up or restore anything.
9. Write down the windows. Ninety days for most deletions, 30 for files, 14 for bulk changes. Pin the table above where the team will find it during an incident.

Most data loss in HubSpot comes from inside the portal, from people and tools with the right permissions doing the wrong thing. The native tools handle most of it, if you act inside the window. The data hygiene cheat sheet and the guide to removing unused properties safely cover the routine work that keeps those incidents small.

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Peter Sterkenburg is the founder of PortalPilot, a HubSpot portal health and optimisation platform. He's spent years in scale-up RevOps, building the systems, fighting the fires, and eventually building the tool he wished he'd had.