Setting contact owner via HubSpot API during contact creation

Other Questions HubSpot
1

I’m working with the HubSpot API to add new contacts to my database. Everything works fine but I can’t figure out how to automatically assign an owner to each contact when it gets created through the API call.

I know there are workflows in HubSpot that can do this automatically, but I really need to handle this through the API itself for my specific use case.

Here’s what I have so far:

$contactData = [
    'properties' => [
        ['property' => 'email', 'value' => $person->email_address],
        ['property' => 'firstname', 'value' => $person->first_name],
        ['property' => 'lastname', 'value' => $person->last_name],
    ]
];

$jsonData = json_encode($contactData);
$apiResponse = $httpClient->request('POST', '/contacts/v1/contact/email/'.$person->email_address.'/profile', [
    'query' => [
        'hapikey' => $api_key,
        'body' => $jsonData
    ]
]);

The contact creation works perfectly, but I’m missing the part where I can set the contact owner. Any ideas on how to include owner assignment in this API call?

2

Had this exact issue yesterday! The property name is hubspot_owner_id (definitely not owner_id), but you need to use the v3 contacts API - v1 is unreliable. Also check that the owner actually has permission to own contacts in their user settings. I wasted hours debugging before realizing contacts weren’t getting assigned because of missing permissions.

3

You’ll need to include the hubspot_owner_id in your properties array. First, call the /owners/v2/owners/ endpoint to get all owners and their IDs. Then add it to your contact creation array like this: ['property' => 'hubspot_owner_id', 'value' => $owner_id]. Just make sure the owner ID belongs to an active user - inactive ones won’t work.

4

Hit this same problem six months back. Use hubspot_owner_id, not owner_id. Here’s the gotcha that cost me hours - you need the numeric user ID from HubSpot, not the email or name. Get these IDs from HubSpot settings under Users & Teams, or do a GET request to /owners/v2/owners/ first to pull all owners and their IDs. Heads up: if you pass a bad owner ID, the contact still gets created but won’t have an owner assigned. No error message at all. Test with a valid owner ID first before you automate anything.