How to Automatically Create Companies in HubSpot — and When to Do It Manually with Clead

HubSpot is a powerful CRM platform that streamlines the way businesses manage contacts, companies, deals, and more. One of its helpful automation features is the ability to automatically create a company record when a new contact is added to the CRM. This is done by matching the email domain name (e.g., @company.com) of a contact to a corresponding company.

For many businesses, this feature saves time and helps maintain a clean database by avoiding manual data entry. However, this convenience can come with limitations—especially for companies targeting large organizations or enterprises with multiple business units.

How HubSpot Automatically Creates Companies

When you add a contact to HubSpot using a business email, HubSpot tries to match the domain with its internal company database and auto-generates a company record. For example, if you add john@unilever.com, HubSpot will automatically create or associate the contact with the Unilever company record.

This is ideal for straightforward B2B environments where each domain name corresponds to a single company.

How to turn on the automatic company creation in HubSpot ?

Go to Settings > Objets > Companies > Automation > Tick “Create and associate Companies with Contacts”

The Problem: Duplicate or Incorrect Company Associations

Things get more complex when your business targets large corporations with multiple subsidiaries, brands, or departments. In these cases, HubSpot might:

• Create duplicate company records with similar names.

• Incorrectly associate contacts to a parent company when they actually belong to a smaller unit.

This creates friction in your CRM, especially if your sales or marketing efforts rely on accurate account segmentation.

Another limitation: when HubSpot automatically creates a company, it tries to populate the record with data from its internal sources. However, this information is often incomplete or outdated, missing key fields like industry, accurate company size, or location. Unfortunately HubSpot does not pull data from LinkedIn, which is definitely the most reliable source for up-to-date business information.

If you're running into one of these issues, don’t worry—there are two simple adjustments you can make to improve your workflow and CRM quality.

When You Should Disable Automatic Company Creation

If you often deal with companies that:

• Have multiple entities or business units under the same domain,

• Require specific segmentation or enrichment before adding to CRM, or

• Demand precision in account-based marketing (ABM),

…it may be wise to disable the automatic company creation feature in HubSpot. You can do this in your HubSpot settings under Objets > Companies > Companies > Association >

By turning it off, you regain control over which companies are created in your CRM and how they are named, enriched, and associated.

A Better Way: Use the Clead Chrome Extension for LinkedIn

This is where the Clead Chrome extension for LinkedIn becomes a game-changer.

Instead of relying on HubSpot’s automated (and sometimes inaccurate) company creation, Clead lets you:

• Manually create companies in HubSpot only when relevant, directly from LinkedIn.

• Pull rich company data (industry, size, location, description, etc.) from the LinkedIn company page.

• Avoid duplicates and random associations, ensuring that your CRM stays clean and useful.

• Save time by creating and enriching a company in just one click.

For businesses that rely on high-quality lead data and accurate company records, Clead helps balance automation with precision.

Final Thoughts

HubSpot’s automatic company creation feature is helpful for many use cases, but it isn’t perfect. If your sales and marketing efforts require detailed and structured company records, especially in complex B2B environments, you may benefit from disabling the automation and using tools like Clead Chrome extension to create and enrich company data on your terms.