What This Update Actually Is
HubSpot added a single toggle inside the email editor. It lives under the Setup panel, in a new Tracking section. When you flip it off, open and click tracking is disabled for that email only.
Your global tracking settings don't change. Every other email in your account keeps behaving exactly as it did before. This is purely a per-email override.
There's also a governance layer. A super admin must grant the Override Marketing Email Tracking Settings permission to each user before that toggle appears for them. It's off by default for everyone.
Two hard limits to know upfront: you can't adjust tracking after the email is first sent or published, and the override is only available when your global tracking is already turned on.
Why HubSpot Shipped This
Here's the real problem. Before this update, tracking was all-or-nothing at the account level. If you wanted to send a privacy-sensitive email without tracking pixels, your only option was to go into Settings and flip the global switch. That switch affects every email until you flip it back.
Humans who manage marketing operations know exactly how much that costs. You touch global settings, you forget to reset them, and suddenly three campaigns worth of open data is missing. Or worse, you don't touch anything and you send tracked pixels to contacts who explicitly asked not to be tracked.
The internal frustration is real. Compliance concerns, partner relationship emails, and test campaigns all have legitimate reasons to skip tracking. None of them should require you to compromise your entire account's data collection to do it.
HubSpot shipped this to close that gap. Granular control without global chaos.
How to Use It Step by Step
Admins: grant the permission first. Without this step, no one sees the toggle.
- Go to Settings, then Users and Teams.
- Edit a user, open the Permissions tab, and navigate to Marketing, then Marketing Tools.
- Toggle on Override Marketing Email Tracking Settings, then save.
Marketers: disable tracking on a specific email.
- Go to Marketing, then Marketing Email.
- Open a draft email or create a new one.
- Click Setup in the left panel.
- Under Tracking, flip the Track opens and clicks for this email toggle to off.
- Finish building and send. That email sends without tracking pixels or click redirects.
Do this before you send. You can't go back and adjust tracking once the email is live.
What It Touches in Your HubSpot Strategy
This update touches more than it looks like at first glance. Let's walk through the ripple.
Email analytics and reporting. Any email where you disable tracking won't contribute open or click data to your Marketing Email performance reports. If you're benchmarking campaign performance, make sure your team knows which sends are untracked. Otherwise your open rate averages get skewed in ways that are hard to diagnose later.
Key Takeaway
Untracked emails don't contribute open or click data to your reports. Document which sends skip tracking so your benchmarks stay accurate.
Contact activity timelines. Without tracking, HubSpot won't log an open or click event on the contact record. This matters if you use email engagement as a trigger in workflows or as a scoring signal in your lead scoring model.
Workflows and smart lists. If any of your automations use "opened email" or "clicked link in email" as enrollment triggers, those triggers simply won't fire for untracked sends. That's the correct behavior for privacy use cases, but it means you need to think about it intentionally before you build.
Deliverability hygiene. This is subtle but worth naming. Turning off tracking removes pixel images and click-redirect URLs from your email. For some privacy-focused recipients and corporate email filters, that can actually improve inbox placement. If you're struggling with deliverability on specific send types, this gives you a clean test variable.
Deliverability is one of the most misunderstood levers in email marketing. If your team hasn't audited this recently, our piece on what's actually killing your B2B inbox placement is worth a read alongside this update.
User permissions and admin governance. The new permission adds a row to your team's permission matrix. If you're running a structured HubSpot portal with role-based access, you'll want to decide upfront which roles get this. Marketing managers probably yes. Junior coordinators probably no, unless they're also managing compliance sends.
Key Takeaway
Update your team's permission matrix now. Decide which roles get Override Marketing Email Tracking Settings before the feature rolls out on July 30.
If you haven't reviewed your portal's permission structure in a while, our HubSpot portal audit checklist covers user permissions alongside every other hub. Good time to run it.
Who Should Care Most
This update is most relevant to specific humans in specific situations. Here's who should move on it immediately.
- Marketing admins at companies with compliance obligations: if your legal or privacy team has asked you to stop tracking certain sends, this is the clean solution. No workarounds, no global toggle gymnastics.
- Partner and channel marketers: sending co-branded communications or operational updates to partners who don't expect to be tracked? Disable tracking on those sends without affecting your campaign analytics.
- Marketing ops leads running A/B tests on deliverability: removes tracking as a variable so you can isolate subject line, content, or send time as the true independent variable.
- Teams sending internal operational emails through HubSpot: employee newsletters, internal announcements, or onboarding updates don't need tracking. Now they won't have it.
- Any marketing team working in GDPR or CASL environments: granular, documented control over tracking is exactly what auditors want to see. This gives you that paper trail at the email level.
George's Take
I've been inside a lot of HubSpot portals over the years, and one of the most common things I see is admins who've accidentally torched a week of email analytics because they toggled global tracking to handle one edge-case send. The intent was right. The execution was painful. What I love about this update is that it puts the decision where it belongs: at the email level, with a permission gate so you know exactly who made the call. It's not flashy, but it's the kind of precision that makes a portal actually trustworthy to run marketing out of. That's what I'm here for.
“The best HubSpot features aren't always the biggest ones. Sometimes it's just giving humans the right lever in the right place at the right time. This is that.”
If you want to see how this fits into a broader email strategy built for 2026, our guide on B2B email marketing quick wins covers the context around deliverability, engagement signals, and how tracking choices affect your results.
Want help thinking through your permission structure, tracking strategy, or how this ripples into your broader Marketing Hub setup? Book a strategy call with the Sidekick team. We'll look at your actual portal and give you a straight answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the HubSpot per-email tracking override?
It's a toggle in the HubSpot email editor that lets you disable open and click tracking for one specific marketing email. Your global tracking settings stay unchanged. All other emails continue tracking as normal. The feature is available on all Marketing Hub tiers and rolls out July 30, 2026.
Do I need a special permission to disable tracking on a HubSpot marketing email?
Yes. A super admin must grant the Override Marketing Email Tracking Settings permission to each user before the toggle appears. The permission is off by default for all users. Admins can grant it in Settings, then Users and Teams, under the Marketing Tools section of a user's permissions.
Can I turn tracking back on after a HubSpot email is sent?
No. Once a marketing email is first sent or published, you can't change its individual tracking settings. You need to configure the toggle before sending. This is by design, since tracking pixels are embedded at send time and can't be retroactively added or removed from a delivered email.
Will disabling tracking on one email affect my other HubSpot email reports?
Disabling tracking on one email removes its open and click data from that send's analytics. It doesn't affect other emails. However, if you have multiple untracked sends in a period, your average open and click rates for that timeframe will appear lower. Document which emails skip tracking so benchmarks stay accurate.
Can I use per-email tracking controls with workflow enrollment triggers?
If you disable tracking on an email, HubSpot won't log open or click events for that send. This means any workflow enrollment triggers based on opened email or clicked link in email won't fire for contacts who receive that untracked send. Plan your automations accordingly before disabling tracking.
Is the per-email tracking override available on HubSpot Free?
Yes. HubSpot's per-email tracking override is available across all Marketing Hub tiers: Free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. The only requirement is that your global open and click tracking must be enabled in Settings, and a super admin must grant the override permission to the relevant user.
