RevOps Checklist for Salesforce to HubSpot Migration

It is common for clients to keep Sales Cloud as the primary CRM, which requires integration, but for this article I’ll assume you’re migrating to HubSpot completely: CRM, marketing automation, service management, and all. If you plan to keep Salesforce CRM and move your marketing automation, you’ll need a different scope, which we cover in our Pardot to HubSpot migration guide.

First off, to migrate safely, you need to audit Sales Cloud and any Marketing Cloud platforms being used, make a plan for the architecture of HubSpot as your primary CRM, clean and map the data, rebuild essential processes, validate the results, and support your teams through the change.

In short, migration is no simple task. But this should excite you! It’s a fresh start.

A structured migration process allows you to review how your business manages customers, from the first enquiry through to a sale, onboarding, support, and renewal. Decisions about account relationships, ownership, and qualification affect everyone who uses the CRM, so agreeing them before the move will ensure you build a HubSpot portal designed for RevOps.

At MarCloud, we organise this work into four phases:

1. Audit, discovery and planning: agree the goals, responsibilities, assets, solution design, user stories, and cutover strategy.

2. Build and integrate: configure HubSpot, build the required functionality, and connect the relevant systems.

3. Export and migrate: safely extract and migrate the agreed data and assets, rebuilding where required.

4. Testing, go-live and support: validate the data and user stories, complete acceptance testing, train users, and hand over the system with documentation and agreed support.

Key takeaways

• Agree your customer hierarchy, lifecycle definitions, and departmental handovers before you import data into HubSpot.

• Review what to migrate, clean, rebuild, archive, or retire so your new portal contains useful information and processes.

• Validate record relationships, customer history, and financial values alongside the number of records you transfer.

• Include role-specific training, post-migration support, and measurable business outcomes in the project plan.

Before preparing your migration plan, I’d ask your sales, service, and marketing leads to agree what their teams need to do in HubSpot and what information they need to do it.

We begin with a project kickoff to introduce the core team and establish who will deliver, approve, and contribute to the work. A responsibility matrix, often called a RACI matrix, records who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed, so everyone understands their role from the start.

During discovery, we work through long-term business goals, operational bottlenecks, stakeholder relationships, and what success looks like for each user group. These discussions inform the scope and give us the measures we’ll use to assess the result.

Sales might need consistent qualification criteria and a forecast that managers can reconcile with open opportunities, whilst service reps need the customer’s purchase history, outstanding subscriptions, and so on. Marketing needs reliable segments, source information, and case progress so the team can run relevant campaigns and follow enquiries through to revenue and lifetime value.

These requirements overlap, which gives you a useful starting point for improving RevOps.

For example, agreeing when sales reps accept a lead also helps marketing measure qualification. Likewise, defining the information sales supplies at handover helps service teams start onboarding promptly.

List your platform requirements at this stage, including permissions, account hierarchies, custom objects, quoting, subscriptions, and any service entitlements you manage. Your intended setup may require particular HubSpot Hubs, subscription levels, or seats, so confirm those requirements before approving the budget.

I’d also include integration work, training, and temporary licence overlap in that budget, with a clear distinction between what the business needs at launch and what you can improve afterwards.

At MarCloud, our Salesforce-to-HubSpot migration process starts with a full platform audit so we can understand your existing structure, automation, reporting, and integrations before planning the move. We audit Sales Cloud, Account Engagement, and Marketing Cloud Next. We also review relevant external marketing platforms, existing spreadsheets, and connected service or business systems.

A good audit needs to connect the technical setup with how people work. A custom field might seem redundant until someone explains that Finance uses it to reconcile invoices, or a report nobody opens might drive an automation that controls account ownership.

While auditing, review standard and custom objects, fields, users, permissions, and record relationships, then work through assignment rules, sales stages, customer handovers, and case routing. Include Salesforce Flows, custom code, and connected applications so the migration plan accounts for their dependencies. This is your best opportunity to resolve Salesforce duplicates and ensure a healthy HubSpot database.

From there, give each item a decision:

Take care with the criteria you use to remove records, particularly if you have a long sales cycle. A contact who hasn’t opened an email recently may still influence an active opportunity or manage an important customer relationship.

Our Helio Intelligence migration involved reviewing and rationalising more than 2,500 lists and assessing and consolidating more than 500 form handlers. That project moved Pardot into HubSpot Marketing Hub whilst maintaining Salesforce connectivity, and it illustrates how much review work an established platform can require.

Once you understand what Salesforce holds and what will be migrated, you can decide how HubSpot should be set up.

As part of discovery, we document the HubSpot solution design and create user stories that describe what each user needs to achieve. These give us specific requirements to build against and validate during testing.

Map records and the relationships between them

The following gives you a starting point for Salesforce-to-HubSpot record mapping:

For each mapping, document the source field, destination property, data type, allowed values, and any transformation the migration needs. Preserve the relationships between records, including the contacts involved in a deal and the company associated with a service ticket.

Agree lifecycle stages, pipelines and ownership

Your lifecycle stages track a contact’s relationship with the business, such as lead, marketing-qualified lead, sales-qualified lead, opportunity, customer. Deal stages track sales opportunities, whilst ticket stages track customer support requests where HubSpot manages that service process.

An existing customer can have an open renewal, a separate expansion opportunity and an unresolved support ticket, so each process needs its own status and owner.

It’s vital to agree on what qualifies a lead, when sales reps should create a deal, what each deal stage means, and which information users need to supply. Then define what service needs when the deal closes, including the agreed scope, customer contacts, and outstanding commitments.

Sense-check the result by hypothetically following one customer through that journey before you import records.

The audit and CRM design give us the information we need for a custom migration plan, including timelines, responsibilities, and the processes we’ll rebuild.

During this first phase, we formalise the discovery findings, agree the assets within scope, and document the solution design, user stories, and cutover strategy. This gives the build, migration, and testing work a shared set of requirements.

Your transfer method needs to suit that scope. HubSpot Smart Transfer supports one-time moves, whilst the Salesforce integration supports continued use of both platforms; file imports, APIs, or specialist tools may also form part of the approach.

Check the limitations carefully. HubSpot currently excludes custom objects from Smart Transfer and warns that running it alongside the Salesforce integration creates duplicates because the tools use different matching identifiers. Those details could change the migration approach, particularly when your portal already has an active integration.

Your plan should show the order of configuration, transfer, and testing. It should also identify who approves the data, who tests each departmental process, and who makes the final go-live decision.

Don’t forget to allow for changes happening after the first export, such as new enquiries, updated opportunities, and incoming support requests. Agree how you’ll capture and transfer those final changes, along with the conditions that would require you to delay migration or use your fallback arrangements.

If the plan uses a Salesforce integration during the transition, establish what it supports and when you can retire it. Also confirm which specialist tools will remain connected to HubSpot after the move.

In the second phase, we configure HubSpot around the agreed design, build the required functionality, and connect the systems that will support your teams.

Configure the portal and relevant Hubs

A typical setup covers users, seats, permissions, account defaults, and security, including two-factor authentication or single sign-on where appropriate. We also configure website tracking and the relevant privacy and cookie settings.

For sales teams, the agreed build may include pipelines, custom properties, forecasting, connected email, calling, calendar booking, sequences, and dashboards. Marketing setup can cover sending-domain authentication, preference management, branded templates, forms, and connections to relevant advertising and social platforms.

Build custom functionality and connect systems

We review how essential processes should work in HubSpot, including the custom objects, associations, and automation they need. This also gives us an opportunity to remove redundant steps and use suitable HubSpot features where they meet the requirement.

For example, a scoped education solution might connect a won deal to a learner’s cohort, update enrolment totals, and apply the required eligibility rules. A legal-services solution might match an enquiry to a firm by postcode, trigger follow-up tasks, and manage reassignment when the firm returns the enquiry.

We also agree how to connect retained systems, using native integrations, APIs, or custom development according to the requirements.

Support customer success and reporting

Customer success requirements may include health scores, risk alerts, renewal notifications, and account-growth reporting. A business might keep ticket management in a specialist tool such as Asana whilst feeding relevant signals into HubSpot, so we agree to those boundaries during discovery.

We build the required operational dashboards and ROI reporting around the agreed data model, with further reporting and validation work as the migration progresses.

To reduce the risk of data loss, preserve the source (at least in the short term), document every mapping, test representative records, and reconcile the destination against the agreed migration scope.

During the third phase, we safely export and migrate the agreed information and assets, rebuilding where required. We agree the historical period and record types in advance, including closed-won opportunities and open or closed business records that your teams still need.

Start with a complete backup or export of the required Salesforce information, checking how your approach handles files, attachments, and relationships. Confirm that your team can retrieve the information and use the recovery process before relying on it.

Include the relevant custom-object definitions, custom fields, existing consent information, and data from other platforms within scope. The export preserves the agreed source information, whilst the migration plan defines which records and assets belong in the live HubSpot portal.

Keep Salesforce identifiers so you can trace records into HubSpot, including cases where you merge several duplicates into one destination record. Your reconciliation should account for successful transfers, approved merges, deliberate exclusions, and errors.

Check what your transfer method preserves

HubSpot’s activity sync documentation explains that emails created through Einstein Activity Capture don’t sync into HubSpot through that integration. If your sales team relies on that history, we need to establish how Salesforce stores it, agree on an appropriate extraction, migration, or access method, and validate that users can retrieve the required information.

Where customer support tickets form part of the scope, the chosen method also needs to account for existing cases. When using the Salesforce integration, enabling case sync only brings records across as users or processes create or update them in Salesforce. Bringing existing support cases into HubSpot requires an import, so historical case coverage should be a specific item in the plan.

Apply the same scrutiny to consent, subscription preferences, and suppression data. During our Scott Logic migration, we preserved consent information and structured it within HubSpot as part of the move from Pardot to Marketing Hub, whilst the business continued using Salesforce CRM.

Reconcile the information

Ask users to open representative records and confirm that they can understand the customer history.

For Sales, reconcile pipeline values by stage, owner, and currency, explaining any differences that follow from agreed clean-up or restructuring. For Service, verify that tickets link to the correct customers and retain the information agents need to continue handling them.

Include awkward records in testing, such as opportunities with several buying contacts, and records belonging to former employees. These checks help you find gaps early and before the team is relying on HubSpot for attribution and reporting.

The fourth phase brings together testing, final data validation, training, and handover. We validate the user stories from discovery and work through the agreed processes with the people who will use them, checking that the solution supports their requirements.

User acceptance testing gives sales, service, and marketing representatives the opportunity to test their work with the appropriate permissions. We resolve critical issues and obtain approval before switching live processes.

We also agree on training audiences, format, documentation, and go-live support within the project scope. Training may include recorded sessions, team-specific onboarding, or a train-the-trainer approach, followed by a system and documentation handover that helps your team manage HubSpot.

Use this checklist as a loose guide to migration, but your safest route for migration is partnering with a HubSpot expert. Even better, a HubSpot and Salesforce expert. MarCloud works with both, which means we’re uniquely positioned to support migrations either way.

1. Audit, discovery and planning

• Hold the kickoff and agree project responsibilities.

• Audit the existing Salesforce platforms and other systems within scope.

• Approve the CRM structure, scope, and departmental owners.

• Document the solution design, user stories, assets, and cutover strategy.

• Confirm backups, archive access, and fallback arrangements.

2. Build and integrate

• Configure the portal, relevant Hubs, and custom functionality.

• Connect retained systems and configure the required reporting.

• Check permissions, preferences, and automation controls.

3. Export and migrate

• Approve cleaned data, field mappings, relationship rules, and historical scope.

• Export the required records, schema, custom fields, and assets.

• Complete a representative test migration and reconciliation.

• Migrate the agreed data and assets, rebuilding where required.

• Transfer and reconcile the final changes.

4. Testing, go-live and support

• Test sales, service, and marketing processes and integrations against user stories.

• Complete user acceptance testing and final data validation.

• Finalise reporting and data-quality dashboards where included.

• Train users by role and provide the agreed recordings and documentation.

• Obtain departmental approval before switching live processes.

• Complete the system handover and confirm support ownership and the criteria for retiring Salesforce.

Your cutover plan should tell users where to work, when to switch, and how to handle incoming activity during the transition. Keep access to Salesforce until you’ve completed your post-migration checks.

Post-migration support is essential for resolving issues you didn’t foresee, refining processes, and building confidence in the new CRM.

I recommend clients monitor things like:

• Duplicates

• Integration failures

• Ownership gaps

• Workflow errors 

• User adoption

Data-cleanliness dashboards help users identify and correct account and contact gaps after migration. Customer success reporting can also track account growth, health indicators, and renewal risks using the measures agreed during discovery.

We offer ongoing HubSpot support and training to address areas where people struggle.

Reviews around 30, 60 and 90 days can help you assess progress, using the baselines and definitions you agreed before migration. Useful measures of improvement include lead response time, qualification conversion, pipeline completeness, ticket response and resolution, campaign build time, and reporting effort.

These measures help you explain value to the C-suite whilst longer sales cycles allow time for revenue. Separate observed operational improvements from revenue changes that other factors may also influence, and use the evidence to decide where future investment will help.

Lastly, assign ongoing responsibility for data quality, properties, and process changes so the portal stays manageable as the business grows.

At MarCloud, we make every stage of your Salesforce-to-HubSpot migration easier with a clear scope and custom plan. 

If you’re planning a move, speak with us about your migration, including your current structure, essential customer information, and the processes you want to improve.

Can you migrate from Salesforce to HubSpot without losing data?

You can protect essential information through backups, agreed mappings, test transfers, and reconciliation. Confirm what your migration method supports and how you’ll preserve any required history outside native HubSpot records, then resolve critical errors before switching live processes. MarCloud can take care of the full migration process for you.

Can Salesforce cases and customer service history move to HubSpot?

You can migrate cases into HubSpot tickets, with the method determining how you handle associations and supporting history. Test the comments, files, ownership, and customer context your service team needs, and include an import of existing cases when using the Salesforce integration.

What happens to Salesforce custom objects and account hierarchies?

You need to design how HubSpot will represent those records and relationships, then choose a supported transfer method and subscription. Some requirements may suit standard objects, whilst others need custom objects; HubSpot Smart Transfer currently excludes custom objects.

Will Salesforce campaigns and automation transfer automatically?

Each element needs its own migration decision. Campaign membership, email assets, workflow logic, and attribution represent separate requirements, so confirm what your preferred method transfers and plan the required rebuilding and validation.

How long does a Salesforce to HubSpot migration take?

Your audit should establish the timeline and cost from the number of objects, relationship complexity, data quality, historical scope, and required rebuilding. We’ve completed full migrations in just four weeks.