HubSpot Migration to Salesforce: The Full Guide 2025
Why consider a HubSpot migration to Salesforce in 2025?
HubSpot is an excellent CRM tool, particularly appreciated by SMEs and marketing teams. However, as companies grow, their CRM needs evolve. Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, offers a more robust, scalable and customizable platform, often better meeting the complex requirements of expanding businesses or structures with more sophisticated sales processes. In 2025, the reasons to switch from HubSpot to Salesforce often include finding advanced sales automation, advanced analytics reporting, artificial intelligence (Einstein AI), a larger application ecosystem (AppExchange), and superior customization capability to adapt to unique business processes. The migration to Salesforce can unlock new potential for growth and operational efficiency.
Migration Preparation: Key Steps Before You Start
A successful migration cannot be improvised. Careful preparation is essential to minimize risk and ensure a smooth transition.
Audit of your HubSpot instance
First of all, conduct a full audit of your current use of HubSpot. Identify critical data (contacts, businesses, transactions, activities, etc.), custom properties, workflows, automations, and existing integrations. Understand how your teams use HubSpot every day. This will help you define what needs to be migrated and how.
Definition of the objectives and scope of migration
What do you expect from Salesforce that HubSpot doesn’t offer you? Clearly define your goals: improve reporting, centralize customer data, optimize sales processes, etc. Determine the exact scope of the migration: what data, what processes, which users will be affected? A well-defined perimeter avoids drifts and facilitates planning.
Data cleaning and preparation
The quality of migrated data is crucial to the success of your new Salesforce instance. Take advantage of the migration to clean up your HubSpot database: remove duplicates, correct errors, standardize formats, and archive outdated data. Clean, structured data will make mapping and importing into Salesforce easier.
Choice of migration method
Several options are available to you:
- Manual migration: Possible for very small volumes of data, but time-consuming and source of errors.
- Migration tools: Software solutions exist to automate part of the process (e.g. ETL tools, specific connectors).
- Integrating partner: Using experts like Turnk guarantees a structured approach, technical expertise and professional project management for complex migration. This is often the safest and most effective option.
The HubSpot to Salesforce migration process detailed
Once the preparation is complete, the migration technical process can begin.
Data mapping between HubSpot and Salesforce
This is a crucial step in matching HubSpot objects and fields (Contacts, Businesses, Transactions) with their equivalents in Salesforce (Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities). Perfect data mapping must be done to ensure that no information is lost or misinterpreted during the transfer.
Data extraction from HubSpot
Export cleaned data from HubSpot, usually as CSV files, within the structure defined during the audit. Be sure to export all necessary objects (contacts, businesses, transactions, notes, tasks, emails, etc.).
Processing and cleaning (if necessary)
Even after an initial cleaning, it may be necessary to transform some data so that it perfectly matches Salesforce’s formats and requirements (e.g. date formats, value lists).
Importing data into Salesforce
Import data into Salesforce using the appropriate tools (Salesforce Data Loader, ETL tools, custom scripts). It is crucial to respect the import order (e.g., Contacts, Contacts before Opportunities) to maintain the relationships between records.
Post-migration testing and validation
After import, perform rigorous testing to verify data integrity, proper functioning of object relationships, and compliance with the defined mapping. Involve key users to validate that data and processes meet their needs in the new Salesforce environment.
Common Challenges of Migrating HubSpot to Salesforce and How to Overcome Them
The migration between two such rich CRM systems has its share of challenges.
Complexity of data mapping
Data structures differ between HubSpot and Salesforce. Incorrect mapping can result in loss of information or inconsistent data.
Solution: Take the time needed for analysis and mapping, involve experts from both platforms and carefully document matches.
Integrity and data loss
The risk of losing data or corrupting their integrity exists at each stage (extraction, transformation, import).
Solution: Set up full backups before you start, make batch imports and perform frequent quality checks.
Downtime and impact on operations
A poorly planned migration can disrupt business activities.
Solution: Plan migration during periods of low activity if possible, communicate clearly with teams and plan a fast and controlled rocking phase.
User adoption and training
Salesforce has a potentially steeper learning curve than HubSpot for some users.
Solution: Anticipate the change, plan a training plan adapted to the different user profiles and accompany them after the migration to ensure a good adoption.
Tools and resources to facilitate migration
Several tools can help:
- Salesforce Data Loader: Free tool for massive data import/export.
- ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools: Solutions like Talend, Informatica or more CRM-specific tools can automate and secure the transfer.
- Dedicated migration solutions: Some publishers offer connectors or platforms specialized in the migration between CRM.
- Documentation and Communities: Salesforce’s online resources (Trailhead) and HubSpot, as well as community forums, are valuable.
Calling on an integrative partner: Why and how to choose?
For a complex migration, partnering with a specialized partner like Turnk has many advantages: deep technical expertise of Salesforce and HubSpot, experience of migration challenges, proven methodology, dedicated project management and ability to customize Salesforce according to your specific needs.
How to choose? Look for a partner with Salesforce certifications, customer references on similar projects, a good understanding of your business issues, and a collaborative approach.
Conclusion: Prepare your success with Salesforce
HubSpot’s migration to Salesforce is a strategic step that, well-conducted, can dramatically enhance your CRM capabilities and support your growth in 2025 and beyond. The key to success is rigorous preparation, methodical execution and effective change support. Remember that migration is not just a technical project, but a transformation that impacts your processes and teams.
Ready to take the step towards Salesforce? A successful CRM migration starts with good planning. Discuss your project with our experts to ensure a smooth transition and maximize your return on investment. Contact Turnk today to plan your migration!
the most common questions
Enterprises often migrate to Salesforce for more advanced features, better scalability, superior customization capabilities, more analytics and AI tools (like Einstein AI) and a broader application ecosystem (AppExchange), especially as complexity or size increases.
Before migrating, it is crucial to perform an audit of your HubSpot instance, clearly define the objectives and scope of the migration, clean and prepare your data, and choose the most suitable migration method (manual, tool, partner).
Accurate mapping of data between the two systems is often the most complex challenge, as data structures differ. Poor mapping can lead to loss of information or inconsistencies in Salesforce. Other challenges include data integrity, downtime management, and user adoption.
An integrative partner like Turnk brings technical expertise from both platforms, experience with complex migrations, proven methodology and dedicated project management, which reduces risk, ensures a smoother transition and allows for optimal customization of Salesforce.
