Why can Bread & Butter track a lead's full journey for years, when CRMs and cookie-based tools lose the trail after a few months?
Most CRMs and marketing tools reconstruct a lead's history from cookies, and cookies were never built to last. Bread & Butter takes a different approach, one that holds up long after any browser-set cookie would have expired.
In short: Most CRMs and marketing tools rely on cookies that were never built to last. HubSpot's own attribution cookies expire after six months by default, and browsers cap cookie lifespan even further: Safari limits script-set first-party cookies to seven days, and Chrome caps every cookie at 400 days, roughly 13 months. Bread & Butter isn't limited by any of that, because once a visitor is verified their full journey is tied to their profile rather than to a cookie that is built to expire. Retention extends to years, not months.
Why Cookie-Based Tools Lose the Trail
Most CRMs and marketing platforms track visitors using cookies that were never built to last.
HubSpot's own documentation lists its analytics cookies, hubspotutk and __hstc , as expiring in six months. That is actually generous compared to what browsers now allow.
Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention caps script-set first-party cookies at seven days. Apple's WebKit team announced the change in March 2020, applying it to all script-writable storage including LocalStorage, IndexedDB and Service Worker caches, not just cookies.
Chrome went further in a different direction. Since Chrome 104, released in August 2022, no cookie can set an expiration date more than 400 days in the future. As Google's own developer documentation puts it, "cookies can no longer set an expiration date more than 400 days in the future." A cookie that asks for longer is not rejected, it is silently capped.
However a tool is configured, the trail eventually breaks. Not from bad design, but because the browser itself won't hold onto it any longer.
| What sets the limit | How long the trail survives |
|---|---|
HubSpot analytics cookies (hubspotutk , __hstc ) |
6 months |
| Safari ITP, script-set first-party cookies | 7 days |
| Chrome, every cookie | 400 days (about 13 months) |
| Bread & Butter, verified identity | Not cookie-dependent |
How Bread & Butter Keeps the Full Picture
Bread & Butter doesn't depend on a single cookie surviving for years, because no cookie can. Once a visitor is verified, through a form submission, a subscribe widget, or an authenticated social login, that identity becomes the anchor instead of the cookie.
Every session tied to that profile, past and future, gets reconstructed against that same verified identity, whether the person returns next week or years later, long after any original cookie would have expired.
Sources
- Cookie Expires and Max-Age attributes now have upper limit, Chrome for Developers
- Full Third-Party Cookie Blocking and More, WebKit, March 2020
- What cookies does HubSpot set in a visitor's browser?, HubSpot Knowledge Base