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Program Code of Conduct

This page is intended as a simple guide to the official code of conduct for the Solutions Partner Program. All participants in the Solutions Partner Program are required to agree to the HubSpot Solutions Partner Program Agreement and remain in compliance with these terms as part of the Agreement.
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Greetings, Program Participants!

Welcome to the HubSpot Solutions Partner Program. We are thrilled that you have chosen to partner with us! At HubSpot, our mission is to help millions of businesses grow better. With your help, we know we can make that happen. HubSpot partners play an integral role in the success of our program and customers. 

The HubSpot culture is driven by a shared passion for our mission and an emphasis on HEART — that is, being Humble, Empathetic, Adaptable, Remarkable, and Transparent. When you partner with HubSpot, you agree to uphold our highest standards and provide the best possible experience for our mutual customers. We expect everyone who partners with us to consistently use good judgment to ensure you are representing both HubSpot and your company in a positive light. 

In this Program Code of Conduct, we spell out partner program expectations and how different violations are handled by HubSpot. Should you have any questions, your Partner Development Manager is here to provide guidance to you. 

We look forward to working with you to provide an outstanding experience to our customers.  


Sincerely, 

Angela O'Dowd

VP, Solutions Partner Program

Program Expectations/Policies

Participants in the Solutions Partner Program are governed by the legal terms and conditions that are outlined in the HubSpot Solutions Partner Program Agreement, which partners sign upon joining the program. This document is extensive and can sometimes be difficult to navigate, so we want to highlight some of the most important pieces of information for you below. 

If at any time you need to review the HubSpot Solutions Partner Program Agreement (HSPPA), it is publicly available online here

Overall, we expect partners to use good judgment in all decisions and interactions with customers, HubSpotters, and other partners. 

Promote a Positive HubSpot Ecosystem

Solutions partners are seen as an extension of the HubSpot brand, and HubSpot strives to create an environment of cooperation and collaboration. Our partners should: 

  • Follow through on contractual agreements entered into with our mutual customers
  • Communicate with respect and kindness, whether in person or online, when representing yourself as a HubSpot partner and conducting business in a partner capacity  

Security Requirements

As a HubSpot Solutions Partner, you have a responsibility to effectively secure access to your HubSpot accounts and protect your clients’ portals from unauthorized access. Your customers trust that you will act with care to protect their data and their customers’ data. It is critical that as a partner, effective security measures are top of mind and adequately enforced in order to build and maintain customer trust, and also, your reputation as a partner. HubSpot has and will continue to add enforcement measures on security features so that all partners are required to adhere to and prioritize the security of their customers. By keeping security top of mind and leaning into enforcement, we can all do our part in protecting customers' data from potential security risks, such as account takeovers, fraud, and others. Below we’ve outlined some core tenets for partners to aid in securing your work in both your partner portal and clients’ portals.

Core Tenets

  • In partner and client portals, create and maintain unique accounts for each user within your organization (no account sharing, please!). 
  • Enable Two Factor Authentication (2FA) for all user accounts in your HubSpot Portal(s).
  • When adding users to client portals, obtain written approval from the client on new accounts and access to their portal.
  • In partner and client portals, implement the principle of “least privilege” access for partner user accounts in customer portals.
  • When individuals leave your organization or change roles, remove their access from your partner portal and client portals.
  • When your agreement with the client concludes, remove your access from client portals.
  • Respect your customers’ and their customers’ data. Always comply with data protection laws, and never share or use their data for your own benefit.

Maintaining unique accounts for all employees accessing HubSpot is a critical component of overall partner portal and client portal security. Sharing passwords amongst multiple employees makes accounts more vulnerable to compromise. Account sharing is dangerous both for you as a partner and your clients and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain compliance with the other items in this security expectations list as part of the Partner Code of Conduct. Similarly, partners should never use one portal for more than one client and should never repurpose portals.

HubSpot accounts often contain a large amount of personal & private information about your contacts, customers, & your business. Two factor authentication (2FA) remains the best, most effective way to ensure that online accounts, including HubSpot accounts, & the data within are safe from bad actors. You must enforce 2FA on all user accounts associated with your organization both within your partner portal & clients’ portals. Users must be challenged by MFA when they sign in to HubSpot’s platform.

Requests for new or modified access to client portals by partners should be documented and approved by a designated client contact prior to access being granted. The first user in a client portal and the user with the most access should always be a client user. Access should be administered by a HubSpot administrator within the client portal only after explicit approval from the client is obtained. This protects both you and your clients.

The principle of least privilege is a computer security concept that suggests limiting users' access rights and permissions to only what is strictly required for job completion. HubSpot recommends that partners and clients alike keep the principle of least privilege top of mind when adding, maintaining, and removing permissions from users within their portal(s). Leveraging permission sets is a great way to enforce least privilege within portals. Additionally, we encourage you to perform user audits at least once per quarter to ensure that only relevant individuals have access to portals and maintain the correct level of permissions.

User hygiene in both partner and client portals is one of the simplest and most impactful things you can do for added security. As a partner, you have obligations to your clients to only allow active, relevant employees from your organization access to their portals. Be sure to follow the principle of least privilege, and remove partner users from client portals when they change roles/clients, and be sure to remove partner users from both client portals and partner portals when they leave your organization. As stated above, we encourage you to perform user audits at least once per quarter to ensure that only relevant individuals have access to portals and maintain the correct level of permissions.

Continuing with the principle of least privilege theme above, you should ensure that you remove your partner users from client portals when your agreement with the client concludes and you, as a partner, no longer need access to the client portal to provide your contracted services. Your quarterly user audits should ensure that only relevant individuals have access to portals and maintain the correct level of permissions in line with your agreement with the client.

Clients and customers are trusting you with their business, their data, and their customers’ data. That data deserves respect, protection, and confidentiality and should never be shared or used for your own benefit. Always be aware of and comply with applicable data protection laws, and when making changes to a client’s HubSpot portal, keep your contractual obligations, data governance, privacy, confidentiality, and ethics top of mind.

Rules of Engagement

Partners are an extension of our sales and service organizations and are expected to abide by the Solutions Partner Program Rules of Engagement at all times.

Please ensure you’ve read and understand the rules of engagement outlined here.

These rules allow us to provide you with the right revenue share and/or sold credit, and ensure that our mutual customers are receiving a quality service experience. Some of the most prominent rules that partners should be familiar with include:

  • Selling with HubSpot: This section outlines processes to follow to receive credit on deals and partner expectations for engaging with HubSpot and our mutual customers.
  • Sales Motions: This section outlines what deals qualify for commissions.
  • Proof of Involvement: This section outlines how we gather consent from customers to grant credit on your sold deals.
  • Service Guidelines to waive onboarding for your customers.
Again, a full list of the Solutions Partner Program Rules of Engagement is publicly available online here

Eligibility Requirements

The HubSpot Solutions Partner Program has entry and eligibility requirements to gain access to program benefits. All partners must comply with the terms and conditions of our HSPPA and maintain program eligibility requirements. Some of these requirements include:

  • Successfully completing Partner Onboarding (not applicable at the Provider level)
  • Maintaining the appropriate level HubSpot subscription
  • Achieving Gold tier status within 2 years of joining the Solutions Partner Program (not applicable at the Provider level)
  • Providing all required documentation to HubSpot for commission payment 
  • Completing all training and/or certification requirements to tier up and/or retain a tier level (not applicable at the Provider level)

If at any time you need to review the HubSpot Solutions Partner Program Policies, it is publicly available online here.

Promotional and Trademark Usage Guidelines

We retain all ownership rights in HubSpot trademarks, including, but not limited to the use of our trademarks on websites, blogs, social media channels, YouTube channels, and newsletters. For a list of some of our marks, check out Our Trademarks page. Partners agree not to use HubSpot logos or other marks, register website domains, or name their business or offerings in any way that violates our policies or infringes on our trademarks. To ensure proper use, partners should: 

  • Only use the images of our trademarks that we make available to you as part of your participation in the Program (e.g., certified partner badges), without altering them in any way
  • Only use our trademarks in connection with the Partner Program and in abidance with the HSPPA
  • Always request approval for press releases and paid ads mentioning HubSpot 

The Solutions Partner Program Promotional Guidelines will provide you with a more in-depth outline of the appropriate use of HubSpot logos and trademarks, including how to request approval for press releases and paid ads mentioning HubSpot. It is publicly available online here. You can also read more about HubSpot’s Trademark Usage Guidelines online here.

Solutions Partner Directory & Social Media Rules

We expect our partners to hold themselves to a professional standard when promoting themselves on our Solutions Directory page, in social media groups, and online in general. Partners are expected to treat their Solutions Directory listing as they would any other professional page and to adhere to the Directory Terms of Use and HubSpot’s Acceptable Use Policy.

Partners may not use their HubSpot platform in a manner that:

  • Is threatening, abusive, harassing, stalking, or defamatory
  • Is deceptive, false, misleading or fraudulent. For example, partners may only list themselves in the directory in locations where they have a physical office. Otherwise, they should be listed as remote.  
  • Is invasive of another's privacy or otherwise violates another’s legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity)
  • Contains vulgar, obscene, indecent or unlawful material

A full list of the Directory Terms of Use is publicly available here as well as HubSpot’s Acceptable Use Policy which is publicly available here. You can find our Marketplace Reviews Policy here. The rules for participation in the Solutions Partner Facebook group can be found here.

Partner Events Policies

We expect our partners to hold themselves to a professional standard while attending all HubSpot events, be it in person or virtual. We expect that any interaction you have with customers, HubSpotters, or other partners at any event is kind and respectful. 

HubSpot will not tolerate any acts of:

  • Harassment
  • Racism
  • Sexism
  • Or any exclusionary language and/or behavior

You can read the full Program Events Code of Conduct here

Violations to the Code of Conduct

Living up to the tenets of HEART, transparency is very important to us. Therefore, we want to be transparent with our partners about the consequences of violating the code of conduct. We want to be very clear that, in some cases, violating the code can be grounds for termination from the program. Obviously, we hope that never happens. But we take violations seriously at HubSpot and will investigate each one thoroughly.

 

How are violations reported and investigated? 

Partner Operations will, from time to time, have issues raised to us by customers, other partners, or HubSpotters. When this occurs, we open a partner escalation ticket to investigate the issue.  

If you, as a partner, have a violation to report, you should reach out to your PDM for guidance on how to approach the situation. If needed, they can raise an escalation ticket on your behalf, and the Partner Operations team will conduct an investigation based on the nature of the report. If you do not wish to involve your PDM, contact partner-operations@hubspot.com directly.

We commit to thoroughly investigating issues and consider all sources of relevant information, including partner input when possible. We will communicate to you the result and details of the investigation where appropriate. Please understand we may not always be at liberty to provide all details of an investigation. 


What are the consequences of violating the code?

Violations to the code of conduct will be recorded in a partner’s history, and a history of repeat issues could result in termination from the program. Depending on the severity of the violation, consequences might include:  

  • A warning notice (delivered by email)
  • Loss of revenue share
  • Removal of or a drop in tier level
  • Inability to participate in special opportunities or events 
  • Suspension from the program
  • Termination from the program

Partners will be notified in writing via email if they receive a warning. We will only contact the primary contact for your account. 

Thank you for adhering to the terms outlined in this Program Code of Conduct. This code has been crafted so that all stakeholders, including partners, customers, and HubSpot, benefit from adhering to these terms. These are not constraints, but an aligned set of rules to allow us to operate in a fair, respectful, and collaborative manner. Our partner program would not be possible without your support and we thank you for abiding by our code of conduct.