Why HubSpot activities show up wrong in Salesforce & how to correct them
Stop sync headaches & master your activity data
Syncing activities between HubSpot and Salesforce can be hugely helpful (when it’s working correctly).
Done wrong, misconfigurations, missing permissions, or unexpected behavior can undermine trust in your data.
Below is a clear breakdown of how to set it up first, what usually breaks, and how to fix it.
How to set up HubSpot → Salesforce activity sync
With that baseline in place, you’ll avoid a lot of the headaches that cause sync errors.
What HubSpot & Salesforce sync can do in 2026
HubSpot supports syncing many kinds of activities into Salesforce as tasks, so your Salesforce side can see things like
- Form submissions
- Marketing email sends/opens/clicks
- Sales email sends/opens, replies
- Meetings scheduled
- Calls made
- Notes created
- Sales content viewed
- Tasks created in HubSpot
- Events from installed integrations
Some activity syncs are time-limited: marketing email events only sync if they occurred within 30 days of the contact being synced. Form submissions up to 1 year back.
Advanced accounts can now leverage Flexible Associations to sync activities to multiple records (e.g., a meeting tied to three contacts and a deal). Ensure your Salesforce 'Activity Settings' allow tasks to be related to multiple contacts to support this.
Common breakpoints + fixes
The most common issue teams hit is when the activities tab in HubSpot shows an error and you can’t toggle Salesforce task sync on.
That almost always comes down to the Salesforce integration user missing permissions.
Fix: In Salesforce, update the integration user’s profile or permission set to give full task and activity permissions (read, create, edit, delete). Ensure the 'Type' and 'Task Subtype' fields are visible to the integration user, then wait for the standard 15-minute sync cycle for HubSpot to refresh.
Another issue is when activities don’t show up as open tasks in Salesforce.
By default, HubSpot will sometimes create closed tasks unless they’re explicitly open tasks for a rep to complete.
Fix: Revisit the activity sync settings (which now overrides timeline sync) and ensure Salesforce Task Types are explicitly mapped. In some cases, you’ll need to adjust how your workflows or automations create tasks so they arrive with the right status.
You might also notice that older activities simply don’t sync. That’s not a bug; HubSpot limits activity history based on when the contact started syncing.
- Marketing email events: only within 30 days of the contact being added.
- Form submissions: only within a year.
If you need older records, you’ll have to import them manually or re-trigger campaigns.
Another common complaint is when Salesforce emails don't show up in HubSpot at all.
If your team uses Salesforce Einstein Activity Capture (EAC), those emails won't sync to HubSpot because Salesforce doesn't store them as standard task records.
This happens because the HubSpot activity is tied to a user that doesn’t exist or isn’t mapped in Salesforce.
Fix: Audit your user mappings: make sure HubSpot users are properly synced with Salesforce users, disable outdated ones, and configure workflows so ownership assigns to the right person.
Finally, there are general sync errors.
These can come from Salesforce validation rules, mismatched field types, missing required fields, or API limits being hit.
Fix: Start with HubSpot’s Sync Health dashboard.
It will show you error cards for each failed record. From there, check field mappings, relax or update Salesforce validation rules, and confirm your integration user has API enabled and enough allocation to keep up with sync demand.
Setup checklist: what to configure first so you avoid headaches
- Integration user
- Dedicated Salesforce user (or service/integration user).
- Permission set or profile grants needed access: tasks & events, object permissions for contacts, leads, etc., “API Enabled.”
- Enable activity sync settings in HubSpot
- Go to Settings → Integrations → Connected Apps → Salesforce → Activities tab.
- Toggle the event types you want to sync.
- Map Salesforce task type where needed so things are categorized correctly in Salesforce.
- Field & property mappings
- Ensure required Salesforce fields are mapped or that fallback values exist.
- Confirm data types match (picklists, dates, text, etc.).
- Handle any custom fields or custom objects you need.
- API limits & sync health
- In HubSpot, check sync health → API call usage, sync errors.
- If Salesforce is limiting API usage (or HubSpot’s allocations), adjust accordingly.
- Regularly monitor error cards and fix them promptly.
- Test with real records
- Create test contacts; trigger each type of activity.
- Confirm they show in Salesforce as tasks, assigned correctly, with the correct status.
- Check whether older activities show up (given limits).
- Roll out carefully
- Start toggling important activity types first, not everything at once.
- Communicate to sales/marketing so they don’t expect data before it’s stable.
- Document ownership: Who owns fixing errors, reviewing sync health, and maintaining the integration?
Things that still can’t be done / caveats
Some limitations are worth keeping in mind.
As of 2026, HubSpot can automatically map and sync owners for activities, provided the Salesforce user is imported into HubSpot first.
However, if a HubSpot user isn't mapped to a Salesforce user, the task will still default to the integration user to prevent sync failure.
Historical data from before a contact was syncing (or before toggles were enabled) won’t import automatically.
Deletion is also inconsistent: removing tasks or events in Salesforce doesn’t always clear them from HubSpot, depending on your mapping and deletion settings.
And finally, automation, validation rules, or custom flows in Salesforce can block syncs in ways that aren’t obvious.
Also worth bookmarking: HubSpot’s guide to managing your Salesforce integration settings. It walks through how to monitor API usage and stay on top of sync errors.
Your next step
If your HubSpot ↔ Salesforce activity sync isn’t behaving, go through the setup steps and checklist above. Most breakages come down to permissions, incorrect mapping, or toggled-off activity types.
If what you’ve got is more complicated (multiple custom objects, heavy automation, big volumes of data), or you’re seeing too many errors, that’s when you might want deeper help.
Let us know: we handle large HubSpot-Salesforce sync projects, cleanup, migration, and optimizing for scale.
