Migrating from HubSpot to Salesforce is one of the highest-stakes projects a RevOps team will run. Get it right, and you unlock enterprise-grade customization. Get it wrong, and you spend six months cleaning up data issues while reps lose trust in the system. This playbook covers the practical execution - the decisions, sequencing, and traps that most migration guides skip.

Pre-Migration: Audit Before You Move

Before touching a single record, run a complete audit of your HubSpot environment:

  1. Export your data model - Document every property, custom object, and association
  2. Catalog active workflows - Identify which workflows are critical vs. legacy
  3. Inventory integrations - List every tool connected to HubSpot via API or native integration
  4. Measure data quality - Run completeness and duplicate reports; clean before you migrate

Rule of thumb: Never migrate dirty data. If your HubSpot data is 70% complete, it will be 70% complete in Salesforce - except now it’s harder to fix.

Field Mapping: The Core of Every Migration

HubSpot and Salesforce use fundamentally different data models. Mapping fields requires more than a spreadsheet - it requires translation decisions.

HubSpot Concept Salesforce Equivalent Migration Notes
Contact properties Contact fields Map picklist values explicitly
Company properties Account fields Reconcile “Company” vs “Account” naming
Deals Opportunities Stage names rarely map 1:1
Lifecycle Stage Lead Status / Opp Stage Requires logic split across objects
Custom properties Custom fields Check field type compatibility
Lists Reports / List Views Dynamic lists become report-based

Critical decision: HubSpot’s lifecycle stages span Contacts and Deals. In Salesforce, this logic splits across Lead Status, Opportunity Stage, and potentially a custom field on Contact. Map this early - it affects every downstream automation.

Workflow Recreation Strategy

Do not try to rebuild every HubSpot workflow in Salesforce. Instead, follow this prioritization:

  1. Must-have - Lead routing, deal stage automation, notification triggers
  2. Should-have - Nurture enrollment, task creation, field updates
  3. Deprecate - Workflows with < 10 enrollments in the past 90 days

For each must-have workflow, document the trigger, conditions, and actions in a three-column format before rebuilding in Salesforce Flow.

Data Migration Sequencing

Order matters. Migrate objects in this sequence to preserve relationships:

  1. Users - Create all Salesforce users first (owners must exist before record assignment)
  2. Accounts - Companies become Accounts
  3. Contacts - Link to Accounts via Account ID
  4. Leads - Unconverted contacts without deal associations
  5. Opportunities - Map Deal stages to Opportunity stages
  6. Activities - Emails, calls, meetings (last 12–18 months only)
  7. Custom objects - Migrate last, after core relationships are validated

Common Pitfalls

  • Skipping UAT - Run a pilot migration with 500 records before doing the full load
  • Ignoring picklist mismatches - “Closed Won” in HubSpot might map to “Closed - Won” in Salesforce; this breaks reports
  • Forgetting record ownership - Every record needs a valid owner; deactivated users cause import failures
  • Going live on a Monday - Cut over mid-week so you have buffer days for fixes before the weekend

Key Takeaways

  • Audit and clean your HubSpot data before migration - never migrate garbage
  • Field mapping between HubSpot and Salesforce requires deliberate translation, not just column matching
  • Sequence your data load to preserve object relationships
  • Rebuild only the workflows that are actively driving value
  • Run a pilot migration before the full cutover