How a new HubSpot automation capability can connect external systems, streamline operations, and help teams respond faster.
HubSpot has introduced an update to custom events that opens up new possibilities for businesses using multiple systems to manage their operations.
As of September 15, 2026, custom events can be created without being associated with a CRM record. Previously, every custom event needed to be tied to an object, such as a contact, company, deal, or ticket.
With this update, businesses can use events occurring outside their CRM to trigger automation in HubSpot’s new agentic automation builder, even when those events aren’t associated with a particular customer.
That might sound like a small technical change, but it has some interesting practical applications.
First, what are custom events in HubSpot?
Custom events allow businesses to track specific actions or activities that aren’t necessarily captured by HubSpot’s standard functionality.
For example, a business might want to track when someone completes an online application, starts an order, activates a subscription, or checks whether a service is available at their address.
Unlike a CRM property, which typically represents the current state of something, an event captures something that happened at a particular moment.
Custom events can also contain additional information about what happened. An order event, for example, might include the order value, product, and date.
Historically, these events needed to be associated with a CRM object.
Now, HubSpot has introduced another option: No Object.
For custom events created using an API or webhook, businesses can select No Object as the object type and use those events to initiate automation without first identifying an associated CRM record.
A practical example: How a telecommunications company could use objectless custom events
Let’s consider a telecommunications company that provides fiber internet to residential and business customers.
Like many telecommunications providers, the company relies on several systems to operate its business. HubSpot might manage customer relationships, sales, and support tickets, while an external billing platform manages subscriptions and a network monitoring system tracks service availability.
These systems contain valuable information, but they don’t necessarily communicate with one another in ways that allow employees to respond immediately when something important happens.
This is where objectless custom events could be useful.
Scenario: A network outage is detected
Imagine the company’s network monitoring system identifies an outage affecting customers in a particular service area.
The monitoring system knows the location, severity, and time of the outage, but it doesn’t necessarily have a corresponding contact or company record in HubSpot.
Previously, using this information to initiate a CRM-based workflow could require additional steps to identify an appropriate record.
With objectless custom events, the monitoring system could send an event directly to HubSpot using an API or webhook.
For example:
Once HubSpot receives the event, it could initiate an automation designed to coordinate the company’s response.
Depending on the available actions and integrations, that automation might notify the Customer Care team, create an internal task, or alert a network operations manager.
For example, a high-severity outage could trigger an escalation to the appropriate team, while a lower-severity issue could generate a routine notification.
The important difference is that none of these initial actions requires the event to be associated with an individual customer.
The outage itself is what initiates the process.
What happens if the company needs to contact affected customers?
This is an important distinction.
An objectless event doesn’t automatically identify which customers are affected by an outage.
If the company also wants to create customer-specific support tickets or send outage notifications, it would need an additional process to identify the affected customers, such as matching the service area to customer records in HubSpot or retrieving that information from another system.
The resulting automation could then take action on those records.
In other words, removing the object requirement makes it easier to initiate the response, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for accurate customer data and integrations when the process requires them.
Other practical applications beyond telecommunications
The same concept can apply to businesses in many industries.
The common thread is that each example begins with an event happening somewhere outside HubSpot, rather than a change to an existing CRM record.
How do you set this up in HubSpot?
According to HubSpot’s September 2026 product update, the new capability is available for custom events created through webhooks or APIs.
The general setup involves:
- Navigate to Data Management → Event Management in HubSpot.
- Create a custom event using the webhook or API method.
- Select No Object as the object type.
- Configure the event and its properties.
- Connect the external system so it can send event data to HubSpot.
- Use the event in the new agentic automation builder to initiate the appropriate actions.
The specific implementation will depend on the external system, the available integrations, and the actions the business needs to perform.
It’s also worth noting that this update is specifically associated with HubSpot’s new agentic automation builder. It shouldn’t be assumed that objectless events support every feature available to traditional, object-associated custom events, including CRM timeline activity, segmentation, or attribution reporting.
What this means for businesses using HubSpot
One of the challenges I frequently encounter when working with businesses is that important information lives in systems outside HubSpot.
A billing platform might know when a customer’s payment fails. An operational system might know when a service is unavailable. An inventory system might know when a product is out of stock.
That information can be valuable to marketing, sales, and customer service teams, but only if there’s a practical way to act on it.
Objectless custom events provide another way to connect these systems without requiring every operational event to be attached to an existing CRM record.
For businesses using HubSpot alongside external systems, this creates opportunities to automate processes that might previously have required additional integration work or workarounds.
It also reinforces an important point about CRM strategy: not every business process begins with a contact, company, or deal.
Sometimes, something happens elsewhere in the business, and HubSpot needs to respond.
This update makes that possible for a broader range of events.
Need help connecting HubSpot with your other business systems?
I help businesses get more out of HubSpot through CRM architecture, automation, integrations, and ongoing consulting. Whether you’re trying to connect an external platform or simplify an existing process, I’d be happy to discuss what you’re working on.