HubSpot to Salesforce Migration Step-by-Step Checklist and Timeline

HubSpot to Salesforce migrations go wrong in predictable places. Record exports leave out calls and notes. Consent preferences land in the wrong field. Pipelines don’t map one to one. A go-live nobody rehearsed drops changes made after the final export. This checklist covers each risk, your 3 migration options, and the timing. For hands-on help, see VALiNTRY360’s HubSpot to Salesforce migration services.

What Moves, What Gets Rebuilt, and What Stays Behind

Records move. Logic gets rebuilt. Settle that first, because it sets your scope.

Companies become accounts, deals become opportunities, tickets become cases, and contacts become leads or contacts under rules you define in the mapping step. For products, line items, custom objects, association labels, attachments, marketing assets, and historical activity, record one decision each: migrate, archive, or rebuild.

Rebuild the workflows and reports the business keeps using, and retire the rest. Forms need a decision too, because HubSpot forms lose paid features once an account is deactivated.

How Long the Move Takes

Treat these as illustrative planning ranges. VALiNTRY360’s data migration checklist puts a single-source move under 100,000 records with a short history at 3 to 6 weeks, and 100,000 to 1 million records with full history at 8 to 14 weeks. Consolidating several sources with history runs 4 to 7 months.

In one published breakdown for a 50,000-contact move, about 1 week went to audit, 2 to configuration and mapping, 2 to testing, and 1 to production and a parallel run. Mapping waits on business sign-off, and test loads wait on clean data. Review at 30 days and check adoption at 90.

Three Ways to Move the Data

A HubSpot to Salesforce data migration comes down to 3 options.

Manual export and import pairs HubSpot’s CSV exports with Salesforce’s Data Import Wizard or Data Loader. You get full control, and every mapping error is yours to catch.

The native integration needs a Professional or Enterprise HubSpot subscription. It syncs contacts two-way, matching by email, and syncs all HubSpot contacts unless you set an inclusion segment. Depending on your auto-create settings, contacts created from Salesforce records may stop syncing later updates. The connected Salesforce user’s permissions also decide which records and fields can sync.

A migration partner handles mapping, transformation, and reconciliation, which suits custom objects, large volumes, or tight deadlines.

The Checklist, Phase by Phase

Before You Export

Inventory every object, property, workflow, list, form, and integration, then decide what moves, what gets archived, and what stays behind. Retention depends on reporting needs, business requirements, and legal obligations, so check with legal before archiving history.
Start data cleanup: merge duplicates and standardize formats at the source.
Back up in layers. HubSpot’s export options cover CRM records, property definitions, files, and a workflow spreadsheet separately.
Review HubSpot’s team-based record access, then translate it into Salesforce roles and sharing rules before launch.

HubSpot’s record export tool defaults to the properties in your current view, so choose all properties with associations. Tick the checkboxes for contacts with several emails and companies with several domains. Each association column holds up to 1,000 record IDs by default, so export as CSV with all associated records when one record has more. Keep the HubSpot Record ID on every row, then rebuild relationships as lookups by matching those IDs.

Mapping

Write the contact rule down and get sign-off. A common one: contacts at an existing customer account become contacts under that account, and early-stage contacts become leads. Match on email against existing Salesforce records first, then decide whether a match updates or skips.

Give a HubSpot pipeline its own opportunity record type only when it uses different stage values, fields, or layouts, since sales processes tie stage values to record types.

Plan activities separately. HubSpot’s timeline sync is one-way and sends calls, meetings, notes, and emails to Salesforce as tasks. Activity sync is two-way and covers tasks, sales emails, calls, and meetings. History windows differ by event: sales emails, tasks, meetings, and notes sync only after a contact starts syncing, marketing email events reach back 30 days, and form submissions reach back one year. Record exports leave out calls and notes, so pull them through contact exports, activity reports, or the engagements API, then load them yourself.

Carry consent over deliberately. Export each contact’s subscription status by type, then decide how it maps in your Salesforce marketing setup. Marketing Cloud Next keeps consent in separate records, so a single opt-out field may not hold every preference. Load opt-outs before any campaign sends.

Map every owner to an active Salesforce user. Reassign departed employees’ records to an active user, such as a named admin. Queues work only for supporting objects, mainly leads and cases. Records owned by inactive users can fail to load.

Test Loads

Salesforce’s guidance points to the Data Import Wizard for loads under 50,000 records on supported objects. Data Loader covers other objects and documents up to 150 million records with Bulk API 2.0, within a rolling 24-hour limit. Confirm your edition, API access, and object support first.

Load parents before children: accounts, then contacts, leads, and opportunities, then cases and activities, plus any other objects in your inventory. Relationships fail when the parent record doesn’t exist yet. Every opportunity needs a Close Date and a Stage, so map both explicitly.

Run at least 2 sandbox loads against pass conditions set in advance: rejected records explained, field samples matching, orphans and duplicates counted, opt-outs preserved, activity history spot-checked, and key processes tested end to end.

Cutover

Freeze changes in HubSpot shortly before the final export. Pause or reroute forms, workflows, connected apps, and API integrations that write to HubSpot. Set a final sync window, run a delta load of records changed since your last rehearsal, and log anything changed after the final export for a second pass. Validate production against your pass conditions, and approve go-live only when they’re met.

Name who can call a rollback, and write the stop conditions in advance, such as failed reconciliation or unresolved consent errors. Keep HubSpot read-only and available until the business signs off.

After Go-Live

Compare record counts and spot-check high-value accounts.

VALiNTRY360’s AdventHealth University project, a Salesforce implementation in higher education, migrated 25 years of alumni records through a full ETL process, reflecting the data-migration experience behind this checklist. Many teams add managed services afterward to keep fixes moving.