Executive Summary
American Frame had already invested in a Magento and HubSpot connector, but the integration could not support the customer, commerce, and marketing workflows the business depended on. Customer data moved in only one direction, field mappings were hard-coded, completed orders were filed as HubSpot Deals rather than Orders, abandoned carts were invisible to the marketing team, and newsletter preferences were never reflected in HubSpot.
Folio3 eCommerce replaced the existing connector with a purpose-built Adobe Commerce and HubSpot integration designed around American Frame’s actual workflows. The new integration covers two-way customer sync, admin-configurable field mapping, abandoned carts as HubSpot Deals, completed Magento orders as HubSpot Orders with line items, product synchronization, object associations across contacts, orders, and deals, newsletter and communication preference sync, and queue-based processing with retry handling, testing controls, and structured logging.
Problem
American Frame had already invested significant time and money in a Magento and HubSpot extension, but the integration still could not support key customer, commerce, and marketing workflows. The business needed to address six questions that its existing connector could not adequately resolve.
How could American Frame synchronize customer information in both directions while allowing new customer fields to be mapped without additional development?
The existing integration lacked true two-way synchronization and relied on predefined customer fields. When the business needed to synchronize additional customer information between Adobe Commerce and HubSpot, it could not simply configure a new field mapping. This created a dependency on development changes as business requirements evolved.
How could American Frame see which shoppers abandoned their carts and follow up with them?
The existing Magento and HubSpot extension was not synchronizing abandoned cart data, leaving American Frame without accurate visibility into shoppers who added items to their carts but did not complete checkout. This limited the marketing team’s ability to identify abandoned shopping activity and build relevant recovery campaigns.
The required flow was to synchronize qualifying abandoned carts as HubSpot Deals and associate each Deal with its corresponding customer Contact. When an abandoned cart later converted into a purchase, the Deal also needed to be associated with the actual HubSpot Order. These relationships would preserve the history from abandoned cart to completed purchase, improve data accuracy and traceability, and provide useful context for future reporting and customer engagement.
How could completed Magento orders be distinguished from sales opportunities in HubSpot?
The existing extension synchronized completed Magento orders into HubSpot Deals rather than the HubSpot Orders object. This was not the appropriate data flow for American Frame’s ecommerce lifecycle: completed purchases should be recorded as Orders, while Deals should represent potential sales opportunities, including abandoned carts requiring follow-up. Mixing completed transactions with opportunities made it difficult to distinguish actual sales from unconverted carts and reduced the usefulness of pipeline reporting. American Frame needed completed Magento orders and their line items to synchronize into HubSpot Orders, with abandoned-cart Deals maintained separately and linked to the corresponding customer and, upon conversion, the actual order.
How could HubSpot reflect the products and individual line items associated with purchases?
The customer-focused integration did not adequately cover the wider commerce lifecycle. Missing or incomplete product, order, and line item data limited the purchase context available in HubSpot.
How could newsletter and checkout marketing preferences stay consistent across both systems?
Subscribe and unsubscribe choices made through Magento needed to be reflected in the corresponding HubSpot Communication Preferences. Without that alignment, marketing teams could not depend on the integration to carry those choices across consistently.
How could synchronization continue reliably when HubSpot requests failed or its API was unavailable?
American Frame needed a way to manage synchronization failures without tying routine storefront and administrative activity to immediate HubSpot API responses, while retaining visibility into what had or had not synchronized.
The customer summarized the frustration with the existing integration:
We are currently using a Magento extension for HubSpot which does not provide two-way syncing with HubSpot. We have already spent a lot of money on this integration and now we are fed up. The current implementation is limited to customers. We do not have any dynamic way to sync any property of the customer.
American Frame
Client — Adobe Commerce and HubSpot Integration Project
Client feedback on the existing integration
Together, these gaps meant American Frame had a connection between Adobe Commerce and HubSpot, but not the complete, usable customer and commerce information needed to support its operations and marketing workflows.
What We Identified
The assessment showed that the problem was broader than a missing field or individual synchronization feature. The existing integration was structured primarily around customer records rather than the complete ecommerce lifecycle.
Several areas needed to be addressed.
First, synchronization needed to work in both directions where required. Customer information could not simply be pushed from Magento into HubSpot. Relevant HubSpot contact changes also needed a path back into Adobe Commerce.
Second, customer property synchronization needed to become configurable. Instead of relying on a fixed list of fields, American Frame needed an administrative mapping layer where Magento customer attributes could be connected to HubSpot contact properties.
Third, the HubSpot commerce model needed to be corrected. Magento orders were being represented as Deals, even though completed orders and potential conversions serve very different purposes.
Fourth, the integration needed to expand beyond customers. Products, orders, line items, abandoned carts, object associations, and newsletter preferences all needed to become part of the overall data flow.
Finally, synchronization needed to operate without making Adobe Commerce storefront or administrative operations dependent on the immediate availability of the HubSpot API.
Instead of asking:
“How can we add more fields to the existing Magento and HubSpot connector?”
We approached the requirement as:
“How should Adobe Commerce and HubSpot exchange customer, commerce, recovery, and consent data so each system represents the correct part of the customer lifecycle?”
That became the foundation of the new integration.
Solution
Folio3 ECommerce designed and implemented a custom Adobe Commerce-HubSpot integration specifically around American Frame’s requirements.
The solution expanded synchronization beyond customer records and introduced a structured flow for contacts, products, orders, line items, abandoned carts, and newsletter preferences.
It also introduced the supporting architecture needed to operate those synchronization processes reliably, including queue-based processing, inbound synchronization, retries, synchronization history, testing controls, and structured logging.
1. Bi-Directional Customer and Contact Synchronization
The integration supports customer information flowing from Adobe Commerce to HubSpot as well as applicable HubSpot contact updates flowing back into Adobe Commerce.
For inbound updates, webhook and/or polling mechanisms can be used to identify and process HubSpot contact changes.
This directly addresses one of American Frame’s original concerns: the previous connector did not provide the two-way synchronization the business required.
2. Dynamic Customer Field Mapping
Folio3 introduced an admin-configurable field mapping layer between Adobe Commerce customer attributes and HubSpot contact properties.
Mappings can define the relevant synchronization direction, including Magento to HubSpot, HubSpot to Magento, or bidirectional behavior where applicable.
This means the integration is no longer restricted to a predefined set of customer properties.
If American Frame needs additional customer information available in HubSpot, the mapping can be configured rather than requiring the entire connector to be redesigned around another hard-coded field.
3. Magento Orders as HubSpot Orders
One of the most important changes was correcting how completed ecommerce transactions are represented in HubSpot.
Previously, Magento orders were being synchronized as HubSpot Deals.
Folio3 changed this model so completed Magento orders are synchronized to HubSpot Orders, together with their corresponding line items.
This keeps completed purchases separate from potential conversions and provides a clearer representation of the customer’s actual order history.
4. Abandoned Carts as HubSpot Deals
Deals were given a more appropriate role in the new architecture.
Instead of using Deals to represent completed Magento orders, qualifying abandoned Magento carts can be synchronized as HubSpot Deals.
The integration can include relevant cart context such as customer or guest information, email, cart URLs, inactivity rules, and pipeline/stage handling.
This gives American Frame visibility into carts that did not convert and creates a structured foundation for abandoned-cart recovery campaigns.
Marketing teams can use those Deals to identify customers who left without purchasing and build HubSpot workflows around reminders, follow-up communication, or promotional offers.
If the customer subsequently completes the purchase, the resulting transaction can then be represented appropriately as a HubSpot Order rather than remaining indistinguishable from an abandoned opportunity.
5. Product and Order Line Item Synchronization
The integration also expands commerce synchronization to products and individual order line items.
This provides HubSpot with more meaningful context around customer purchases.
Instead of seeing only that a customer exists or that a transaction occurred, HubSpot can represent the products and line items associated with the customer’s ecommerce activity where synchronization is enabled.
6. HubSpot Object Associations
Synchronizing multiple object types is only useful if their relationships are preserved.
The Folio3 integration therefore supports associations between relevant HubSpot objects, including contact-to-order, deal-to-contact, and deal-to-order relationships where applicable.
This provides a more connected view of the customer journey rather than leaving customer, cart, and order information as isolated records.
7. Newsletter and Communication Preference Synchronization
American Frame also needed Magento newsletter activity to be represented correctly in HubSpot.
The client uses Magento newsletter functionality together with the Mageside Subscribe At Checkout extension. When a shopper chooses the subscription option during checkout, the preference is written into Magento’s core newsletter subscriber data.
Folio3 extended the integration so Magento newsletter subscribe and unsubscribe activity can synchronize with HubSpot Communication Preferences.
HubSpot subscription types can be retrieved and mapped to the appropriate Magento newsletter activity. Where required, the integration ensures the HubSpot contact exists before setting the appropriate SUBSCRIBED or UNSUBSCRIBED status with the configured legal basis.
8. Queue-Based Processing and Operational Reliability
When synchronization is required, database queue jobs are created and processed through Magento cron. This prevents storefront and administrative saves from having to wait directly for HubSpot API calls to finish. If HubSpot is temporarily unavailable or a synchronization request fails, the integration provides retry and failure handling. Additional operational capabilities include synchronization history, administrative tools, structured logging, and testing controls. Testing mode and email filters allow selected records to be used during validation before synchronization is enabled more broadly.
Why This Approach Was Better Than Extending the Existing Connector
American Frame’s original challenge was not caused by one missing feature. The limitations existed across synchronization direction, customer property flexibility, product and commerce data, order modeling, abandoned cart visibility, object associations, newsletter preferences, and operational reliability.
Continuing to add individual workarounds to the existing connector would not have addressed the underlying integration model. The purpose-built Folio3 eCommerce integration instead treats Adobe Commerce and HubSpot as two systems with different responsibilities.
- Completed purchases become Orders
- Abandoned carts become Deals
- Customers remain Contacts
- Products and line items provide commerce context
- Newsletter decisions are reflected through Communication Preferences
This creates a cleaner and more extensible foundation than continuing to force additional ecommerce requirements into a connector primarily designed around customer synchronization.
Customer Benefits
The redesigned integration addresses the core limitations American Frame identified at the beginning of the project.
The business now has a two-way, multi-object connection between Adobe Commerce and HubSpot rather than an integration focused primarily on customer records. Dynamic field mapping gives American Frame greater control over the customer properties exchanged between the two platforms. Products, orders, and line items provide HubSpot with broader commerce context. Completed Magento purchases are represented as HubSpot Orders instead of being forced into Deals.
One of the most important business improvements is greater visibility into abandoned carts. Previously, American Frame did not have an effective way to identify and manage abandoned Magento carts through its HubSpot workflows. With the new integration, qualifying abandoned carts can be synchronized into HubSpot as Deals with the relevant cart and customer context.
The customer journey can now be represented clearly:
Customer Creates Cart
Cart Becomes Inactive
Cart Qualifies as Abandoned
HubSpot Deal is Created
Marketing Re-engages Customer
Customer Completes Purchase
Magento Order Synced to HubSpot Orders
Abandoned opportunities and completed purchases are no longer mixed together. Deals focus on recovery and pipeline activity, while Orders represent actual ecommerce transactions.
From a technical perspective, queue processing, retries, testing controls, synchronization history, and structured logging provide greater operational control over the integration and reduce the dependency of normal Adobe Commerce operations on immediate HubSpot API availability.
What Other Magento Businesses Can Learn From This
A Magento and HubSpot integration can appear successful if customer records are being transferred between the two platforms. But for merchants that depend heavily on HubSpot for marketing and customer lifecycle management, customer synchronization alone may not be enough.
Businesses evaluating an existing Magento and HubSpot connector should consider:
- Can information move in both directions where the business requires it?
- Can Magento customer attributes be dynamically mapped to HubSpot properties?
- Are completed Magento orders represented as commerce orders rather than sales opportunities?
- Can abandoned carts be identified and used for recovery workflows?
- Are products and order line items available in HubSpot where required?
- Are the relationships between contacts, abandoned carts, Deals, and Orders maintained?
- Are Magento newsletter preferences reflected through the appropriate HubSpot Communication Preferences?
- Can failed synchronization jobs be retried and audited?
- Can new synchronization behavior be safely tested before production rollout?
If several of these capabilities are missing, adding another isolated field or synchronization script may only provide a temporary workaround. The more important question may be whether the underlying integration model accurately represents the business’s ecommerce and customer lifecycle.
FAQs
Conclusion
The key lesson from the American Frame project is that successfully connecting Adobe Commerce and HubSpot requires more than synchronizing customer records.
For American Frame, that meant moving beyond a limited customer-centric connector and creating a model where customer information can move in both directions where required, customer properties can be dynamically mapped, products and line items provide commerce context, completed purchases are represented correctly as Orders, abandoned carts become actionable recovery opportunities, and newsletter preferences are reflected appropriately in HubSpot.
Queue-based processing, retry handling, testing controls, synchronization history, and logging provide the operational foundation required to manage those data flows reliably. By rebuilding the connection around American Frame’s actual ecommerce and marketing workflows, Folio3 eCommerce created a more structured foundation for using Adobe Commerce and HubSpot together while giving the business better visibility into customer activity and new opportunities to recover abandoned carts.
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