Migrate From HubSpot: Step-by-Step Guide for Small Teams

Migrating from HubSpot means exporting your contacts, companies, deals, and activity notes, then importing them into a new CRM. For a 5-20 person team, data export and import takes 1-2 weeks, then another 2-3 weeks running both systems in parallel while you verify everything. Some HubSpot data won't move: workflows, sequences, automations, and marketing assets are locked into HubSpot's platform layer and don't translate to another system. Here's the realistic process and what to expect.

What You Can and Cannot Migrate From HubSpot

You can export contacts, companies, deals, and activity notes from HubSpot. You cannot export workflows, sequences, automations, email templates, landing pages, marketing campaigns, or email logs--these are proprietary to HubSpot's marketing and automation layer and have no direct equivalent in most other CRMs.

This is the first reality check. If your revenue is driven by HubSpot sequences--automated emails that follow a specific cadence--you will need to rebuild those sequences in your new platform or accept that your team will send emails manually during and after the transition. Most teams underestimate how much of their workflow is hidden in HubSpot's automation, and the discovery phase is worth the time.

HubSpot exports data in CSV format, one file per object type. You'll get a contacts file, a companies file, a deals file, and a notes file. Each row represents one record. Relationships between objects (which contact belongs to which company, which deal belongs to which contact) are preserved through ID columns, so they can be re-established in your new CRM if you import in the correct order.

Custom fields--fields you created to track specific data like "Contract Value" or "Decision Timeline"--are included in the export. However, custom properties that don't have an obvious place in your new CRM will need manual mapping or manual entry. This is the biggest source of scope creep in migrations.

Before You Start: The Pre-Migration Checklist

Before you touch an export, answer six questions: What HubSpot data are you actually using? Who needs access to what in the new system? Which custom fields are critical, and which are historical? Do you have a backup? Can you run both systems in parallel for 2-3 weeks? What's your timeline for the final cutover?

This pre-flight checklist saves weeks of rework. Teams who skip it end up importing data, discovering they forgot to create custom fields, and then having to re-import everything.

Start by running a HubSpot data quality audit. How many active contacts do you have? How many deals are in your pipeline? Which deal stages actually represent your sales process, and which are junk? How many of your "active" contacts haven't been touched in a year? This audit tells you what you actually need to migrate and what you can archive. Many teams find that 20-30% of their HubSpot database is dead weight.

Next, export everything to a secure location. Even if you're confident about the migration, keeping a backup of your complete HubSpot database is non-negotiable. Store backups offline or in a secure cloud folder, separate from your working files.

Then, define your team structure and permissions in the new CRM. If your sales team has three people and you want contact ownership assigned by region, set that up now. If you have separate pipelines for new business vs. expansion, create those pipelines now. The goal is to have your new CRM fully configured and empty, ready to receive data.

Finally, list every custom field you use. Go through each HubSpot property and write down: field name, data type (text, number, date, picklist), whether it's critical to your process, and what the equivalent field in your new CRM should be. This mapping document is your migration blueprint.

Step 1: Audit and Export Your HubSpot Data

Log into HubSpot and navigate to the Contacts app. Click the three-dot menu and select "Export." Choose CSV format and export all records in all stages. HubSpot will prepare a file that includes all properties and all contacts. This usually takes a few minutes for databases under 10K contacts.

Repeat this for Companies, Deals, and any custom objects you're using. Notes and activity records may or may not be exportable depending on your HubSpot tier. If you're on HubSpot Professional or higher, you can request an export of activity logs (emails, calls, meetings) via the export tool. This is time-consuming, but it preserves your deal history.

For teams with more than 50,000 records, consider the HubSpot API instead. The CSV export tool has limits and can be slow. The API allows you to batch-fetch all records much faster. However, this requires developer knowledge or API tooling, so most small teams use CSV.

Once you have all your CSV files, open each one in a spreadsheet and do a quick sanity check. Do the record counts match what you expected? Are the custom fields populated? Are there rows with no company or contact name (which would be data errors)? Look for any obvious data quality issues now, because they'll be easier to fix in the source CSV than after import.

One critical check: look at the column headers. HubSpot exports properties as column names, so you'll see something like "First Name", "Last Name", "Company", "Deal Name", "Close Date", etc. Write down these exact column names--you'll need them to map to your new CRM's field names.

Step 2: Prepare Your Target CRM

Before you import anything, fully configure your new CRM. Create all teams and set up role-based permissions. Create all deal stages and custom fields that mirror your HubSpot setup. Create contact fields, company fields, and deal fields. This is where many migrations stumble. Teams import data, then realize they forgot to create the custom field for "Competitor", so all that competitor data lands nowhere and is lost. By pre-creating all fields, you make the import a clean one-to-one mapping.

If you're moving to an open-source CRM like Twenty CRM, log into your workspace and set up the pipeline stages that match your HubSpot setup. If you're using managed Twenty CRM hosting through Opsily, your admin can pre-configure users and SSO so they log in on day one.

In your new CRM, create the following:

1. Deal pipeline stages. List every stage in your HubSpot pipeline and create that stage in the new CRM. Make sure the stages exist and in the same order.

2. Custom contact fields. If you have HubSpot fields like "Preferred Contact Method" or "Industry Vertical", create those in your new CRM now.

3. Custom company fields. If you track "Company Size" or "Annual Revenue", create those fields now.

4. Custom deal fields. Any field that was in your HubSpot deals export should have a home in the new CRM.

5. Team and role structure. Create users and assign roles (e.g., "Account Executive", "Sales Ops", "Manager") now.

Once all this is done, your new CRM is ready to receive data. You haven't imported anything yet, but the structure is in place.

Step 3: Map Fields and Design the New Data Model

This is the most detailed step, and it's where most migrations slow down. You need to build a field mapping: a document that says "HubSpot's Close Date field goes to the new CRM's Expected Close Date field" and so on.

Open your HubSpot CSV files and your new CRM's field documentation side by side. For each HubSpot property, write down: HubSpot field name, data type, new CRM field name, and notes on any transformation needed. For most fields, this is straightforward. "First Name" maps to "First Name", "Company Name" maps to "Company Name", "Close Date" maps to "Close Date". But you'll run into mismatches.

Picklist values are common friction points. HubSpot might have deal statuses like "Prospecting", "Qualification", "Proposal Sent", "Negotiation", "Closed Won", "Closed Lost". Your new CRM might only allow five statuses. You'll need to decide: do you collapse "Proposal Sent" and "Negotiation" into a single stage, or do you lose that granularity? This is a business decision, not a technical one.

Field types create mismatches too. HubSpot lets you store phone as text with any format. Your new CRM might require phone numbers in a specific format. You'll need to clean your phone data before import or accept that phone numbers might look messy in the new system.

Date formats vary. CSV files can have dates in many formats: "2024-12-31", "12/31/2024", "31-Dec-2024" all mean the same thing, but your import tool might only accept one format. You'll need to standardize before upload.

Numeric fields might have currency symbols or commas in HubSpot's export. Your new CRM might require clean numbers. Pre-clean your data.

One useful technique: take a small sample of 100 records and do a test import. Map the fields, run the import, then open 10 records in the new CRM and verify they look right. This costs 30 minutes and saves you from discovering a major mapping mistake after you've imported 50,000 records.

Also, document what you're NOT moving. If HubSpot has a field you no longer use, explicitly say "not importing" in your mapping document. This prevents confusion later.

Step 4: Import and Test

Now you have CSVs ready and a mapping document. Time to import. Most CRMs have an import wizard that walks you through: upload your CSV, map columns to fields, decide how to handle matches, and start the import. The safest sequence is: Companies first, then Contacts (linked to companies), then Deals (linked to contacts).

Why this order? Because relationships matter. If you import contacts first, then try to link them to companies later, you'll do that work manually. If you import companies first, then import contacts with a "Company Name" column, the import tool can auto-link contacts to their companies. Same with deals and contacts.

Start with a test import of 100-500 records. Upload your sample CSV, walk through the wizard, and let it run. Then go into the new CRM and check: Do the record counts match? Are the fields populated? Are the relationships correct? Are dates formatted correctly? Are picklists working?

If any of these fail, stop. Fix your mapping or your CSV and try again with the test file. Do not proceed to the full import until the test is clean. Once the test import is good, delete those test records from the new CRM, then run the full import. For 10,000 contacts, this usually takes 5-30 minutes. Monitor it while it runs.

After import completes, verify: Do your contact and deal counts match what you exported from HubSpot? Spot-check 20 random records. Are they complete and correct? If you're confident, you can move on to the next step.

Step 5: Reconnect Email and Manage Activity History

Imported data is inert--it's sitting in your new CRM, but your email isn't connected yet. To get back to normal operations, you need to re-sync your team's email accounts. Most CRMs require you to reconnect your email one person at a time. Your sales team will log into the new CRM, authorize their email (Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, etc.), and the CRM will start logging new emails automatically. This is usually instant, but verify it's working by sending a test email.

Old emails and activities from HubSpot are another matter. They won't auto-sync to the new CRM, because the new CRM has no way to fetch them. You have two options: accept the cutover (new CRM has your contact and deal data, but not the email history), or migrate activity history (export HubSpot's email log, clean the data, and import it--this takes several additional weeks).

Most teams choose the cutover approach. You keep HubSpot as read-only historical reference for 30 days, then cancel it.

A note on compliance: if you're required to preserve email and communications history, make sure your new CRM can legally store that data. Check their data processing agreement and verify they support your archival and compliance requirements.

Realistic Timeline and Common Mistakes

A migration for a 5-20 person team typically takes 3-5 weeks from start to finish. Week 1 is audit, checklist, and pre-migration setup (5 hours of work). Week 2 is backup, export, and field mapping (10 hours of work, mostly manual). Week 3 is test import, fix issues, and full import (8 hours of work spread across the week). Weeks 4-5 are email re-sync, final testing, and cutover (6 hours of work total).

The reality is that 70% of the time goes to field mapping and data cleanup, not to the technical import. If you have messy data in HubSpot (duplicate contacts, missing company associations, orphaned deals), you'll discover it during mapping and have to decide whether to clean it before import or live with it in the new system.

Common mistakes that slow down migrations: importing before custom fields exist (data gets lost, then you have to re-import), wrong import order (importing deals before companies means deals have no company to link to--they become orphaned), not cleaning your CSV before import (extra spaces, inconsistent date formats cause import errors), forgetting to back up (you corrupt your data and have no backup), underestimating email re-sync (each team member has to manually authorize their email, and it's easy to forget someone), and not testing with real data before full import.

Check whether your target CRM offers managed hosting and setup support to reduce these risks. Many teams benefit from a guided migration process, especially if they have custom fields or complex pipelines.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a migration actually take?

For a small team (5-20 people), 3-5 weeks from decision to running the new system as your primary CRM. Most of that time is planning (week 1) and email stabilization (weeks 4-5). The actual data import (week 3) is the fastest part.

Can I run HubSpot and the new CRM in parallel?

Yes. For 2-3 weeks after import, keep HubSpot active and log all new activity in both systems. This gives you a safety window to catch any migration mistakes before you're fully dependent on the new system. After 3 weeks, you can turn off HubSpot if you trust the migration.

What if I have 100,000+ contacts?

CSV export gets slow and risky with that many records. Use the HubSpot API or contact HubSpot's migration team for a data export. Also, confirm your new CRM can handle that many records without performance issues. Most open-source CRMs can, but check the documentation first.

Can I migrate HubSpot workflows to another CRM?

No. Workflows are HubSpot-specific. You'll need to rebuild your automations in the new CRM or accept that some workflows won't exist. Common workaround: use Zapier or Make to bridge HubSpot and the new CRM during transition, then migrate the logic.

What if I'm using HubSpot's email or landing page tools?

Those don't migrate. You'll need to rebuild landing pages, email templates, and campaigns in the new system or a separate marketing tool. Some teams keep HubSpot for marketing automation and pair it with an open-source CRM like Twenty for sales. This is a valid hybrid approach if marketing is core to your business.

Do I need help from a consultant or migration service?

Most 5-20 person teams can migrate without external help if they follow a checklist and allow 3-5 weeks. Hire help if you have 100K+ records, complex custom objects, or regulatory requirements.

What should I do with old HubSpot email logs?

Export them to a secure archive and keep HubSpot as read-only for 30 days after migration. Your team can reference old emails if needed. After 30 days, you can cancel HubSpot and delete or archive the email logs, depending on your compliance requirements. Do not try to import email logs into the new CRM unless you have a legal or contractual obligation--it's a lot of work for little benefit.

Is my data safe during migration?

If you follow the checklist (backup before you start, test with 100 records first, verify counts after import), yes. The biggest risk is user error (importing before fields exist, wrong import order), not technical failure. That's why the step-by-step process matters.

The Bottom Line

Migrating from HubSpot is a project, not a flip of a switch. You need 3-5 weeks, a mapping document, and a test import before you commit to the full switch. Most of your time will go to planning and field mapping, not to the import itself.

The honest reality: some of your HubSpot workflows, automations, and email sequences will not move to the new CRM. You'll have to rebuild them or work around them. But your contacts, companies, deals, and activity notes will move cleanly if you follow the process.

If you're evaluating alternatives to HubSpot, understand what you actually need. If cost matters and you need a lightweight CRM, compare Twenty CRM as a HubSpot alternative and see how it compares to your current setup. If you're ready to migrate to a platform you control, learn about managed Twenty CRM hosting with Opsily to get the infrastructure and support set up from day one.