How to Migrate From HubSpot to CRMown: An Honest Checklist

Should you migrate from HubSpot at all?

HubSpot is a capable product and lots of businesses run on it happily. Moving is real work, so be clear about why you’re doing it.

Teams that migrate from HubSpot for good reasons tend to have concrete ones. You want your inbox, invoicing, website, automations and CRM on one shared set of records. Or you’re folding several subscriptions into one. “It might be nice” isn’t a reason, and it won’t carry you through the boring middle of a migration.

Before you start, write down the three or four things your team does in HubSpot every day. Check each against the CRMown features page or in a trial workspace. If something you rely on has no home, keep that tool connected or hold off. A half-finished migration is worse than none.

If you’re weighing up a HubSpot alternative for small business use, run the same check on every option you’re considering, us included.

Your HubSpot migration checklist

1. Take stock of what you have

• Contacts, companies and deals, how many of each, and which properties you actually use
• Pipelines and their stages
• Email templates and sequences
• Forms on your website
• Workflows (write each trigger and action down in plain English)
• Connected inboxes and calendars
• The reports your team opens every week

2. Export contacts from HubSpot (and companies and deals)

HubSpot lets you export records from its list views as spreadsheet files. Export contacts, companies and deals separately, and include every property you use, not only the default columns. Keep the files somewhere permanent. They’re your backup too.

What you can export depends on your HubSpot plan and settings, so check your own account before you plan around it.

3. Set up the CRMown side first

Before importing anything, build the structure the data will land in:

• Custom fields for HubSpot properties that don’t match a standard field (Settings, Customize).
• Pipelines with the stages you want going forward. Start from a pipeline template or copy your HubSpot stages exactly. Each pipeline can have its own custom fields.
• Users and roles (Settings, Account), so records can go to the right owners.

4. Import contacts

Contacts, Import runs in three phases:

1. Analyse. Checks your file and how its columns line up with contact fields, before anything is written.
2. Duplicate-check. Flags records that already exist.
3. Execute. Writes the records.

Every run is kept in Import history with its source file, the rows it updated, stats, and a problem report. If a run goes wrong, one-click undo reverses it.

Import a small test file first. Open five records and check them by hand. Then run the full file.

5. Companies

Import your companies file, or use company backfill, which creates company records from contact email domains. Backfill is handy if your company export is thin.

6. Import deals into your new CRM

Pipeline items use the same analyse-then-execute import as contacts. Map each HubSpot deal stage to a CRMown stage before you run it. Afterwards, stage sync keeps a contact’s stage and its pipeline stage in line.

7. Clean up

Run Data Quality (under Insights) to see issues across the database, with a one-click fix per issue or per category. Then check the duplicates report and merge anything the import didn’t catch.

8. Reconnect inbox and calendar

• Connect Google, Microsoft or a custom IMAP account in Settings, Account, and set up channels in Settings, Communications.
• Turn on two-way calendar sync (Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, Apple iCloud), plus Calendly pull if you use it.
• Rebuild your booking pages and update the links wherever they’re published.

One honest caveat. Email history from HubSpot’s timeline won’t come across in a contacts file. Your connected mailbox carries your email going forward. If you need particular old threads on a record, save them before you cancel.

9. Rebuild forms

With the Web Studio suite, rebuild your forms in Forms. Form AI import lets you paste an existing form and get a built version back. Plain forms on Web Studio sites are captured automatically: submissions land in Forms and create a contact and a pipeline lead. More on how a website form to CRM connection works.

10. Rebuild workflows

Workflows don’t transfer between platforms. Rebuild them on purpose. With the Automation suite you can:

• Start from one of the 100 prebuilt templates across ten categories.
• Describe the workflow in plain English and let AI workflow generation build it, then check it on the visual canvas.
• Use run history to confirm each one fires properly before you switch off the HubSpot version.

11. Run both, then cancel

Keep HubSpot read-only for at least one full sales cycle. Spot-check records, reports and automations. Cancel when your team has stopped opening it, not before. The last step when you migrate from HubSpot should be the boring one.

How long does switching CRM systems take?

It depends far more on your data than on the software. A three-person consultancy with a tidy contact list and two simple workflows might be done in a weekend. A twenty-person team with years of custom properties and dozens of workflows should plan in weeks.

The FAQ on our pricing page notes that larger migrations, such as HubSpot accounts with years of history, get hands-on help on the Max and Custom plans. On any plan, the in-app Training library covers how each feature works.

FAQ

Keep reading

• How to replace your tool stack with all-in-one business software
• How a unified inbox handles email, SMS, WhatsApp and social DMs

Import a test slice of your HubSpot export into a real workspace before you commit to anything.

Capabilities described from CRMown’s feature inventory, generated from the live codebase on 30 August 2026. HubSpot is a trademark of HubSpot, Inc.; this guide isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by HubSpot. Plan availability varies; check pricing for current details.