In higher education, subdomains are everywhere:math.university.edu, engineering.university.edu, education.university.edu — and in HubSpot, that creates chaos.
Each subdomain gets treated as a separate company record, even though they all belong to the same institution. For SaaS providers selling into universities, that means hundreds of duplicate companies, broken reporting, and incomplete adoption metrics.
In this episode of How I Fixed Your Data, we spoke with Jasper Meurs, a HubSpot consultant who helps clients streamline their CRM data. Jasper shared how he helped a higher education SaaS company clean up its company data using Koalify, turning a painful manual process into an automated, accurate system.
🎥 Watch the full conversation with Jasper Meurs
In the US higher education market, it’s common for universities to create separate subdomains for each department:
education.university.edu
business.university.edu
From a web perspective, that makes sense. But in HubSpot, each subdomain is interpreted as a unique company — even though they all belong to the same university.
This leads to:
Duplicate company records: Each subdomain generates a new “company.”
Fragmented data: Usage data and integrations map to the wrong records.
Broken reporting: Customer success teams can’t see true adoption at the institution level.
Manual cleanup: Teams spend hours merging duplicates by hand.
As Jasper explains: “They were manually merging hundreds of company records every month. Every new subdomain meant another duplicate. It just wasn’t scalable.”
Jasper’s client already synced usage data from their own SaaS platform into HubSpot. But because the same institution appeared under multiple subdomains, reporting was unreliable.
The goal: ensure that each institution = one HubSpot company, no matter how many subdomains existed.
Jasper began by building duplicate rules focused on company domain similarities.
He used Koalify to identify companies that shared the same root domain, ignoring subdomains.
“We started simple — just detecting subdomain variants of the same root domain. Koalify made that setup straightforward.”
Not all duplicates are equal. Jasper designed Primary Rules to choose the best record to keep:
Active License: Keep the record with an active customer license.
Shortest Domain Name: The shorter the domain, the more likely it’s the main domain (e.g., university.edu over math.university.edu).
Most Associated Contacts: Prefer the record with the richest data.
Oldest Record: As a last resort, keep the first-created company.
To implement the “shortest domain” logic, he created a custom calculated field to measure domain length, ensuring the cleanest parent record became the primary company.
“It’s a simple trick — shorter domain = parent domain. That small property made a big impact.”
Rather than merging everything at once, Jasper used a phased approach to ensure accuracy.
Phase 1: Merge companies without active licenses.
Phase 2: Gradually include older records by creation date.
Manual Review Tasks: Koalify workflows assigned tasks for records with previous or current licenses, letting Jasper manually validate those merges.
This hybrid approach — automated merges with manual review for edge cases — kept the process safe and auditable.
“Koalify could’ve merged everything in one click, but we wanted to validate batches. It’s safer, and it builds confidence with the client.”
The improvement was immediate:
⚡ Hundreds of duplicate companies merged in days instead of months.
📈 Clean usage reporting: Every institution now has a single, accurate record.
💬 Faster client responses: When a university asked about adoption, reports were correct within minutes.
🧩 Better CRM trust: Sales and success teams now rely on HubSpot data confidently.
“They were shocked. They’d been struggling for years. Now when someone says ‘NYU has duplicates,’ it’s fixed before lunch.”
The biggest takeaway? Phased automation beats instant automation.
Run merges in batches.
Validate key cases manually.
Use clear rules to pick the right primary record.
Build safeguards (like domain length or license status) to protect data integrity.
Another insight: not every subdomain should merge. Some university systems use subdomains for entirely separate institutions within a network.
To handle this, Jasper added a custom property to mark “system schools,” ensuring those weren’t merged accidentally.
“Once we saw that edge case, we added a flag for system schools — so they stay separate. That’s the power of flexible logic.”
Koalify gave Jasper and his client the ability to:
Automate merges based on custom logic (not just exact matches).
Balance automation and human oversight.
Build confidence in the CRM by merging safely and transparently.
“Before Koalify, we relied on HubSpot’s default duplicate tool — and that’s 100% manual. With Koalify, it’s structured, flexible, and automated.”
Q: Why do subdomains cause duplicates in HubSpot?
A: HubSpot treats every unique domain as a different company. Subdomains like math.university.edu are seen as separate from university.edu.
Q: How can I merge companies that share a root domain?
A: Use Koalify to create duplicate rules that compare the root domain only. Combine that with primary rules (active license, shortest domain) to pick the best record.
Q: Should I merge all duplicates automatically?
A: Not always. Follow Jasper’s example , merge in phases and manually review edge cases like multi-campus systems.
Q: Can Koalify merge companies automatically in HubSpot?
A: Yes. Koalify automates safe merges via workflows and rules, while letting you insert manual checkpoints for quality assurance.