Update an existing contact by email

Last updated April 10, 2019

POST /contacts/v1/contact/email/:email/profile

Method Details

HTTP Methods:

POST

Content Type:

application/json

Response Format:

N/A

Requires Authentication?

Yes

Rate Limited?

Yes

Headers

User-Agent

Products:

Marketing & CRM

Required Scope:

contacts

Update an existing contact in HubSpot, identified by email. This method lets you update the properties of a contact in HubSpot.

To update a contact, you should make an HTTP POST call to this endpoint with some JSON in the request payload. This JSON should contain properties from the contact that you want to add to or update. See the sample JSON to the right for an example of this snippet of JSON.

If you are trying to close a contact into a customer via the API, you should be updating the 'lifecyclestage' property and setting the value of this property to 'customer'.

Remember, if a property doesn't yet exist, you can create a new custom property through the API by using the 'Create Property' method.

Note: This endpoint will return a 404 if there is no existing record with the specified email address. If you're looking to automatically create or update contacts using the email address, you can use this endpoint.
Required Parameters How to use Description
OAuth Access Token or API Key Authorization: Bearer {token} header
or hapikey={key} query parameter.		 Used to authenticate the request. Please see this page for more details about authentication.
Email Used in the request URL The email address of the record that you want to update.
Contact JSON Used in the request body This is JSON that represents a contact that you're updating. This should be of the format seen below in the code sample given. Properties can have an optional timestamp indicating when the property was set (this will be the current time if not specified).
Optional Parameters How to use Description
None None No optional parameters for this method.

There are some properties that are worth noting in terms of updating a contact:

  • Lifecycle Stage - This property denotes the stage at which the contact is in. Stages include 'subscriber', 'lead', 'marketingqualifiedlead', 'salesqualifiedlead', 'opportunity' and 'customer'. These values are described in HubSpot's Contacts application under "Contacts > Manage Settings > Lifecycle Stages". Once a contact does become a "customer", it will be reflected in HubSpot's Sources application as such.
  • Please Note The Lifecycle stage is not designed to move backwards. If you need to set this property to an previous stage, you will first need to set the value to "" (an empty string) and then set the new Stage
  • HubSpot Score - This property cannot be updated through the API.
  • Email address - It is possible to update the email address of contacts using this endpoint. The current email address must be used in the URL to identify the existing contact in HubSpot, and the new email would go in the JSON in the request body.

Example URL to POST to:  https://api.hubapi.com/contacts/v1/contact/email/testingapis@hubspot.com/profile?hapikey=demo

If the request succeeds, you'll get an HTTP 204 response, which represents that you have successfully updated the contact in the system.

The response from this API call are standard REST-style HTTP response codes that mark success or failure, with meta information about the call that was made. There will be no data in the response body.

  • 204 when a contact is updated
  • 400 if there is a problem with the data in the request body. You'll get a message in the response body detailing the issues with the data.
  • 401 when an unauthorized request is made, such as an expired access token of wrong API key.
  • 404 when there is no existing record with the email address specified in the request URL.
  • 500 when an internal server error occurs. Please alert us in the API Forum if you receive an HTTP 500 error.

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Example POST URL: https://api.hubapi.com/contacts/v1/contact/email/testingapis@hubspot.com/profile?hapikey=demo Example POST body: { "properties": [ { "property": "firstname", "value": "Updated" }, { "property": "lastname", "value": "Record" }, { "property": "website", "value": "http://updated.example.com" }, { "property": "lifecyclestage", "value": "customer" } ] } Returns a 204 No Content response on success.
import requests import json url ='api.hubapi.com/contacts/v1/contact/email/tester123@hubspot.com/profile?hapikey=demo' headers = {} headers['Content-Type']= 'application/json' data=json.dumps({ "properties": [ { "property": "email", "value": "tester123@hubspot.com" }, { "property": "firstname", "value": "test" }, { "property": "lastname", "value": "testerson" }, { "property": "website", "value": "http://updated.example.com" }, { "property": "lifecyclestage", "value": "customer" } ] }) r = requests.post(data=data, url=url, headers=headers) print(r.status_code)