Latest / Sidekick's What Just Shipped / HubSpot customer portal's support area is now Support Space | Shipped Aug 2026
Transcript
- Dana (AI host): If your help articles tell customers to find the support area of your portal, that name just changed. Rob (AI host): HubSpot renamed it Support Space, and the settings behind it are worth a fresh look. Dana (AI host): Stay for the ticket permission choice that decides what each customer can see. Narrator (AI voice): This is Sidekick's What Just Shipped, presented by Sidekick Strategies. Narrator (AI voice): Your hosts, Rob and Dana, are AI. Narrator (AI voice): The voices are synthetic, the research is real, and humans check every claim before it reaches you. Dana (AI host): Hey there, and welcome. Dana (AI host): Rob and I are AI hosts, and today we're working from HubSpot's August product updates and two support portal help articles updated in October. Rob (AI host): Right, so today I'm playing a hypothetical support team lead whose saved replies all say check the support area. Dana (AI host): Perfect. Dana (AI host): HubSpot's August update says the portal's support area is now called Support Space, as the portal expands beyond support tickets. Rob (AI host): Just a new name? Dana (AI host): That's the official line. The rename is the whole announcement. Rob (AI host): So why spend an episode on it? Dana (AI host): Why it matters: the words your customers read should match what they see. Dana (AI host): If your snippets and help articles say support area, they're now out of date. Rob (AI host): Fair point. Dana (AI host): And HubSpot's help articles describe the thing itself as a login-protected space where customers can access and manage their support tickets. Rob (AI host): Where does an admin set it up? Dana (AI host): Go to Service, then Customer Portal, and click Get Started. Dana (AI host): You give it a portal name, which shows in the browser tab, then pick a domain and enter a slug. Rob (AI host): Can you change those later? Dana (AI host): Yes. Dana (AI host): The portal name, slug, and domain can all be edited later in the same Customer Portal area, and you can only pick domains whose primary content type is customer portal. Rob (AI host): Any domain gotchas? Dana (AI host): Two. Dana (AI host): Portals on a HubSpot system domain, like hs-sites, won't send membership emails to an access group. Dana (AI host): And the portal appears in your domain's primary language, because multiple language portals aren't supported yet. Rob (AI host): Then what? Dana (AI host): Next you connect a support form, or choose no form. Dana (AI host): Then you pick a default inbox or help desk where new portal tickets go. Rob (AI host): And when a customer replies? Dana (AI host): When they log in and reply to a ticket, their response appears in the inbox or help desk you selected. Rob (AI host): Okay, here's my real question. What can each customer actually see? Dana (AI host): You choose one of three. Only tickets they're associated with. Dana (AI host): All tickets from their company, meaning their primary company. Dana (AI host): Or selected customers can see company tickets, based on contact property filters. Rob (AI host): Oh, nice. Rob (AI host): So in a made-up case, a customer's operations manager could see every ticket from their company. Dana (AI host): Exactly, and they'd switch between My view and Organization view. Rob (AI host): Can you hide some tickets entirely? Dana (AI host): Yes. Dana (AI host): In the Ticket visibility section, you add filters on ticket properties to control which tickets appear. Rob (AI host): And who gets in at all? Dana (AI host): Either access group membership required, where HubSpot sends a registration email, or self-registration, which needs self-registration turned on in your private content settings. Rob (AI host): What about conversations? Dana (AI host): Only tickets appear. Dana (AI host): Conversations not tied to a ticket, like chat or team email messages, won't show up. Dana (AI host): And if a ticket has several threads, only the original thread appears. Rob (AI host): Huh. So could internal chatter leak? Dana (AI host): HubSpot says anything in a conversation thread is visible to customers with permission to that ticket. Dana (AI host): So keep internal talk in notes and comments. Rob (AI host): Good warning. Rob (AI host): And what about customers on their phones? Dana (AI host): Mobile shows a card view with at most two ticket properties, so put the two most useful ones first. Rob (AI host): Can customers see who owns their ticket? Dana (AI host): By default they see the owner's first name, and you can switch that to full name, last name, or a custom alias. Dana (AI host): There's one more useful check. Dana (AI host): The Conversations card in the ticket record's right sidebar shows which conversations will appear in the portal. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Hey, it's George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Full honesty, this is my AI voice clone, made with my permission. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): A new name in your portal is a good excuse to make sure your team, your help articles, and your portal all speak the same language. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Sidekick's Service Hub training teaches your support team tickets, knowledge base, feedback surveys, and customer portals, inside your actual HubSpot portal with your real ticket data. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): And if your tier supports it, we set up the customer portal during training. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Find Service Hub Training under services at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Rob (AI host): My skeptic question. Our research says every HubSpot tier gets Support Space, Free included. Rob (AI host): Does that hold up? Dana (AI host): Close, but HubSpot's support portal help articles list Service Hub Professional and Enterprise. Dana (AI host): So plan on those tiers. Rob (AI host): Anything else we couldn't pin down? Dana (AI host): Two things. Dana (AI host): Our research mentions vertical menu icons when a portal has multiple spaces, plus onboarding and billing spaces on the way. Dana (AI host): HubSpot's update only says the portal is expanding beyond support tickets, and we found no official detail on the icons or those spaces. Rob (AI host): And the help articles still say support portal, not Support Space. Dana (AI host): Right. Dana (AI host): Both were updated in October and use support portal throughout, so expect to see both names for a while. Rob (AI host): Is there a legacy version? Dana (AI host): Yes. Dana (AI host): The articles cover the updated support portal, which replaces the legacy customer portal, and HubSpot recommends migrating. Rob (AI host): What happens during the migration? Dana (AI host): The portal is temporarily unavailable, and tickets, conversations, and customer data carry over automatically. Dana (AI host): Existing theme variables don't migrate, so you'll customize the simplified theme afterward. Rob (AI host): Any other settings worth knowing? Dana (AI host): You can let customers reply to closed conversations, or let them close their own tickets. Dana (AI host): You can also rename Tickets to something like Orders or Requests, and show up to ten ticket properties as columns. Rob (AI host): Okay, plan for my imaginary support team. Dana (AI host): Step one: search your help articles, snippets, and email templates for support area, and update them to Support Space. Rob (AI host): Step two: check your customer ticket permissions, so each customer sees the right tickets. Dana (AI host): Step three: move internal discussion into notes and comments. Rob (AI host): Step four: if you're still on the legacy customer portal, preview the new theme before you migrate. Rob (AI host): Support lead verdict: spend an hour on the wording now, because the rename costs nothing and confused customers open more tickets. Dana (AI host): New name, same tickets. Update your words. Rob (AI host): HubSpot's August updates and both help articles are linked in the show notes, along with our research at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Dana (AI host): Thanks for listening, from both of us. Rob (AI host): See you in Support Space. Narrator (AI voice): Sidekick's What Just Shipped is presented by Sidekick Strategies, with AI hosts Rob and Dana and AI-generated music. Narrator (AI voice): We're independent, and not affiliated with HubSpot. Find our research at Sidekick Strategies dot com.