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Short answer: no, Flowella does not require WhatsApp recipients to be HubSpot Marketing Contacts. WhatsApp messages send to any contact in your HubSpot portal regardless of their Marketing Contact status. This is one of the more common questions during onboarding, especially from teams who’ve been on a Marketing Hub Pro/Enterprise plan for a while and are used to the Marketing Contact restriction applying to every outbound channel. The detail matters for two reasons: cost (Marketing Contacts are billed per contact on HubSpot’s pricing) and segmentation (lists filtered to Marketing Contacts only would exclude WhatsApp-only audiences otherwise).

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Why the Marketing Contacts restriction doesn’t apply

HubSpot’s Marketing Contacts model gates outbound Marketing Email specifically. Contacts set as Non-marketing Contacts cannot receive marketing emails sent from HubSpot. WhatsApp messages from Flowella are not HubSpot Marketing Emails. They send from Flowella’s infrastructure via the WhatsApp Business Platform, using your WhatsApp Business Account and Meta-approved templates. HubSpot’s Marketing Contact gate doesn’t fire on them, so the messages go out regardless of whether the contact is marked as a Marketing Contact. This is true for every Flowella send pattern:
  • HubSpot workflow → Send WhatsApp Template action
  • HubSpot workflow → Send WhatsApp Message action
  • Flowella Inbox outbound replies
  • Flowella Campaigns (manual broadcasts)
  • API-triggered sends via Flowella’s REST API
Not being subject to the Marketing Contact gate does not mean you can message anyone in your CRM. Two separate consent rules still apply:
WhatsApp’s own Business Messaging Policy requires that recipients have explicitly opted in to receive WhatsApp messages from your business. “They bought from us once” or “they gave us their number for a phone call” is not opt-in.The opt-in needs to:
  • Mention WhatsApp explicitly. A general “keep me informed” checkbox is not enough.
  • Be voluntary. Pre-ticked boxes don’t count.
  • Be auditable. Keep the timestamp, source, and method of opt-in. Flowella records this on each contact in the Consent tab.
See Managing opt-outs for how Flowella tracks consent on each channel.
In the UK, EU, and similar regimes, WhatsApp counts as direct marketing the same as email or SMS. The lawful basis you rely on (typically consent, occasionally legitimate interest for transactional messages) still applies.The Marketing Contact toggle in HubSpot is sometimes used as a CRM-side flag for “we have a marketing consent for this person.” If you use it that way, you may want to keep marking opted-in WhatsApp contacts as Marketing Contacts even though Flowella doesn’t require it, just to keep your data model consistent.

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Should you mark WhatsApp opt-ins as Marketing Contacts anyway?

Three common positions: “Yes, mark them.” Keeps your data model consistent: anyone who’s consented to marketing of any kind shows as a Marketing Contact in HubSpot. Easier to reason about and produces accurate counts for HubSpot’s contact tier billing. “No, only mark email opt-ins.” Reduces HubSpot Marketing Contact cost. If you have a large list that’s opted in to WhatsApp but not email, keeping them as Non-marketing Contacts saves money on HubSpot’s billing while still letting Flowella message them. “Track separately with a custom property.” Leave the Marketing Contact flag for email opt-ins only, and add a custom contact property like whatsapp_marketing_consent (boolean) for WhatsApp opt-ins. This is the most accurate model when you have different consent for different channels. Flowella works correctly under any of these approaches. Independently of the Marketing Contact flag, Flowella records WhatsApp consent on every contact in its own data model:
  • Opt-in source — form, manual entry, API, or imported
  • Opt-in timestamp — when the consent was recorded
  • Opt-in method — e.g. “submitted form lead-gen-q4 with WhatsApp checkbox ticked”
  • Opt-out events — if the contact replies STOP, blocks the number, or you record a manual opt-out
This is visible per contact in Flowella → Contacts → [contact] → Consent, and feeds into the audit trail that you’d produce in a GDPR Subject Access Request.

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What if HubSpot’s Marketing Email and Flowella WhatsApp run in the same workflow?

A common pattern is a HubSpot workflow that fires both a Marketing Email and a WhatsApp template. In that case:
  • The Marketing Email step honours the Marketing Contact flag. Non-marketing Contacts get filtered out.
  • The Send WhatsApp Template step (Flowella) does not. It sends to whichever contacts hit the action, regardless of Marketing Contact status.
If you want the WhatsApp send to also be gated by Marketing Contact status, add a workflow branch filter that checks the Marketing Contact property before the Flowella action.