How to Manually Quarantine Contacts from Marketing Emails in Hubspot

Managing email deliverability in Hubspot is critical if you send regular marketing campaigns and want to protect your sender reputation. One important safeguard is the ability to manually quarantine contacts so they no longer receive marketing emails from your account.

This step-by-step guide explains exactly how to quarantine a contact, what happens to quarantined records, and how to safely reverse the quarantine when needed, based on the official HubSpot documentation.

What Manual Quarantine Means in Hubspot

Before you start changing contact statuses, it helps to understand what manual quarantine does inside Hubspot.

When a contact is manually quarantined:

They cannot receive any marketing emails from your Hubspot account.
They can still receive one-to-one sales or service emails sent from records.
A system property indicates that the contact is quarantined.
The status stays in place until you explicitly remove it.

This is different from:

Unsubscribes – when a contact chooses not to receive certain email types.
Hard bounces – when an address is invalid or can’t be delivered to.
Global bounces – when HubSpot prevents sends to a known bad address across all accounts.

Manual quarantine is a proactive control you apply inside your own Hubspot portal to prevent risky or unwanted marketing sends.

Reasons to Quarantine Contacts in Hubspot

Here are common scenarios where manual quarantine is helpful in Hubspot:

Suspicion that a list may contain spam traps or risky addresses.
Contacts you must not email due to legal or compliance requirements.
Internal test records you do not want included in large campaigns.
Problematic contacts who reported abuse or complained outside normal unsubscribe flows.

Using quarantine for these cases helps keep your Hubspot email sending healthy and reduces the chance of deliverability issues with email providers.

How to Manually Quarantine a Single Contact in Hubspot

You can set quarantine on an individual contact directly from the contact record. Follow these steps inside your Hubspot account:

In the main navigation, go to Contacts > Contacts.
Use search or filters to find the contact you want to quarantine.
Click the contact name to open the contact record.
In the left sidebar, locate the contact properties panel.
Search for the property that indicates whether the contact is quarantined for marketing emails. In the official documentation this property is managed by HubSpot and is used to block marketing sends.
Update this property to mark the contact as quarantined. Confirm and save your changes.

Once you save, Hubspot will immediately treat this contact as quarantined for marketing emails, and future marketing sends will skip that record.

How to Quarantine Multiple Contacts in Hubspot

If you need to quarantine many contacts at once, Hubspot lets you do that from the contacts index page.

Select records to quarantine in Hubspot

Navigate to Contacts > Contacts in Hubspot.
Apply filters, lists, or search criteria to locate the group of contacts you want to quarantine.
Select individual checkboxes, or choose the top checkbox to select all records on the page.
If needed, click the option to select all matching contacts in the filter set, not just those visible on the first page.

Apply the quarantine update in Hubspot

With contacts selected, click the More or Edit actions menu.
Choose to Edit properties in bulk.
Locate the quarantine-related property used by HubSpot to flag contacts that should not receive marketing emails.
Set this property to the value that represents a quarantined status.
Confirm the bulk edit and wait for the update to complete.

After processing, all selected contacts will be quarantined for marketing emails. Campaigns sent from Hubspot will automatically skip those recipients.

How Quarantined Contacts Behave in Hubspot Email Tools

Once a contact is quarantined, Hubspot handles them differently across email tools and reports.

Marketing email sends: The contact is excluded from future marketing sends, including automated workflows that deliver marketing email types.
One-to-one emails: Users can still send individual one-to-one emails directly from contact records, deals, or conversations, because these are not marketing emails.
Lists and segments: Quarantined contacts can still appear in lists, but are suppressed at send time when the email is a marketing message.
Performance metrics: Skipped quarantined contacts are typically reported as not sent, which helps keep bounce and complaint rates lower.

This automatic handling ensures that once you quarantine a contact in Hubspot, you do not need to manually exclude them from every send.

How to Remove Manual Quarantine in Hubspot

If a contact was quarantined in error, or if circumstances change, you can remove the quarantine so marketing emails can be sent again.

Un-quarantine a single contact

Open Contacts > Contacts in Hubspot.
Search for and open the contact record.
In the properties panel, find the quarantine-related property.
Change the value so that the contact is no longer marked as quarantined.
Save the record.

Once updated, future marketing emails in Hubspot can be delivered to that contact, as long as they are not bounced or unsubscribed for other reasons.

Un-quarantine multiple contacts

From the Contacts index in Hubspot, filter for the property value that indicates quarantined contacts.
Select the relevant records using the checkboxes.
Choose Edit properties from the bulk actions menu.
Set the quarantine-related property back to the value that means not quarantined.
Save and wait for the bulk update to finish.

Only remove quarantine in Hubspot when you are confident that sending marketing emails to those contacts is safe and compliant.

Best Practices for Using Quarantine in Hubspot

To get the most benefit from manual quarantine while maintaining healthy email performance in Hubspot, follow these guidelines:

Use quarantine proactively: When in doubt about a list’s quality, consider quarantining high-risk segments instead of sending to them.
Combine with permissions and unsubscribes: Respect subscription types, consent records, and local regulations alongside quarantine controls.
Review quarantined lists regularly: Periodically audit quarantined contacts to confirm they still need to be blocked from marketing emails.
Document internal rules: Create internal policies on when to quarantine contacts in Hubspot so your team handles records consistently.

Learn More About Hubspot Email Quarantine

The full, official instructions and definitions for this feature are documented by the platform itself. For detailed reference directly from the source, review the original help article here: HubSpot manual quarantine documentation.

If you need strategic help improving deliverability, segmentation, or automation in your Hubspot portal, you can also consult a specialist agency such as Consultevo to design a complete lifecycle email strategy around these features.

By carefully applying manual quarantine, monitoring results, and following best practices, you can use Hubspot to send safer, more targeted marketing emails that protect both your brand and your sender reputation.

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Hupspot email quarantine guide