Certification
Certification is the badge program on top of your listing: HubSpot's Ecosystem Quality team audits how your app actually behaves in production — success rates, scope hygiene, token handling, documentation truth — and renews that judgment every two years. Most of what it measures is exactly the plumbing HS-X's runtime already owns, which makes the audit far less scary than it reads.
TL;DR — Certification requires 60 active unaffiliated installs, a 95%+ API success rate, six months listed, OAuth-only auth, and a demo video that shows the uninstall flow. The review loop is bounded at 60 days and the badge renews every two years. HS-X's runtime carries the reliability half of the bar; the installs and documentation are yours.
A production audit, not a code review
The listing review asks whether your app is presentable. Certification asks whether it behaves: HubSpot reads your app's actual API activity over trailing windows and grades it. Requests that 429 because you ignored rate limits, 401s from tokens you let expire before refreshing, one-at-a-time reads where a batch endpoint exists — each drags a measured success rate that must stay above 95%, and the published feedback examples show reviewers citing your error logs back at you with specific status codes.
That is why the prerequisites are time-shaped. Six months listed and 60 active installs are not bureaucracy; they are the sample size the audit needs. Plan certification as a season-two goal: ship, grow installs, keep the error rate clean, then apply.
The requirements that decide it
| Requirement | The line |
|---|---|
| Active installs | 60+ production accounts, unaffiliated with you, showing app activity in the last 30 days |
| API success rate | Above 95% across all activity; error responses count against you |
| Time listed | 6 months minimum, and no certification rejection in the last 6 months |
| Auth | OAuth authorization-code flow only; no copy-pasted tokens, refresh without user involvement |
| Scopes | Every requested scope must be used; one-segment-only scopes move to conditional or optional |
| Identity | One app ID, one listing; verified domain; no classic CRM cards |
| Uninstall | Call HubSpot's uninstall endpoint when a user disconnects on your side, and show it in the demo video |
| Documentation | Public, current setup guide with screenshots including the scope-approval screen |
| Renewal | Two-year cycle; reminders start 90 days out; lapse removes the badge |
The demo video is a gate, not a nicety: HubSpot will not start the review without one, and it must show a user disconnecting, the uninstall endpoint firing, and the app disappearing from the portal's connected apps.
What your runtime already carries
Read the rejection examples and a pattern emerges: most failures are plumbing, and the plumbing is what HS-X owns in your own Cloudflare account. The runtime's rate limiter paces requests inside HubSpot's published budget so bursts do not become 429 streaks. Token refresh happens proactively under a per-install lock, which is the exact fix for the expired-token 401 pattern reviewers cite. Sync writes batch into HubSpot's batch endpoints, the precise recommendation in the one-at-a-time feedback example. And uninstall detection in the runtime stops activity against portals that removed you, so a dead install does not sit there generating errors against your success rate.
What stays on your plate: declaring only the scopes you use (the review reads your traffic and will name unused ones), the uninstall-endpoint call in your own disconnect flow, the demo video, the setup documentation, and earning the installs themselves. The marketplace guide covers the listing half; monitoring covers watching your own error rates before HubSpot grades them.
Applying, and staying certified
One app at a time, demo video attached. HubSpot responds within 10 business days, and the whole feedback loop is bounded at 60 days. Pass, and the badge plus the certified search filter and collection eligibility turn on. Fail, and you can reapply in six months, so go in ready rather than hopeful.
Certification is now a two-year cycle rather than a permanent state: reminders begin 90 days before expiry, the developer account tracks status and renewal, and falling out of compliance can trigger recertification early. Treat the requirements as operating standards, not a one-time exam, and renewal becomes paperwork instead of a scramble.