Pipedrive to HubSpot: what moves, what breaks, how long

Moving from Pipedrive to HubSpot is one of the easier CRM migrations, because HubSpot has a built-in tool for it. HubSpot Smart Transfer lists Pipedrive as a supported source and maps people to contacts, organisations to companies, deals to deals, and brings across notes, products, users, currencies and the main activity types. Your records, pipelines and the links between them move cleanly.

What breaks is everything around the records. Emails logged through Smart BCC, your Pipedrive automations, the dates each deal entered each stage, custom fields (unless you add a Data Hub subscription) and anything sitting in Google Drive all need a decision before you start. Most of the work in a Pipedrive to HubSpot migration is that list, plus cleaning the data before it moves.

For a 50 to 250 person business, plan on four to six weeks for a straight move of one or two hubs, and eight to twelve weeks once integrations and automation rebuilds are in the scope. If your sales team is small and happy in Pipedrive, and nothing else in the business needs the CRM, you may not need to move at all. That case is at the end.

What moves cleanly from Pipedrive to HubSpot?

HubSpot publishes the Pipedrive mapping Smart Transfer uses. Here it is, with what the export side looks like in Pipedrive:

Three conditions sit on top of that table. Only a HubSpot Super Admin can run Smart Transfer. Moving custom field mappings and Pipedrive activities needs a Data Hub subscription. And anything moved in a one-time transfer after the sync will not update if someone changes it in Pipedrive later.

If you skip Smart Transfer and go by spreadsheet, Pipedrive's export covers leads, deals, organisations, people, products, activities, projects, notes and files, as CSV or Excel. Only global admins can export by data type, and you only get what your visibility settings let you see, so run the export from an admin account. HubSpot's import will take records, the associations between them and activities (calls, emails, meetings, notes and tasks), up to 1,048,576 rows per file on a paid plan.

This session from our YouTube channel, recorded at a HubSpot User Group, covers HubSpot data migration and bringing your data home to Australia.

What breaks, and what to do about each gap

• Email history. HubSpot says Smart Transfer syncs Pipedrive email activities but not logged emails. If your reps relied on Smart BCC or email sync, the conversation history on a deal may not follow it. Decide how far back you actually need email, and whether a summary note on the deal is enough for older threads.
• Deal stage history. Pipedrive keeps a changelog of every field change on a deal, and its API exposes it. HubSpot records stage dates itself from the moment a deal is in HubSpot. We have not found a HubSpot method for writing old stage dates into those built-in properties, so if you report on time in stage, bring the dates across as custom date properties and build those reports on them.
• Automations. Nothing in the Pipedrive mapping covers automations. List every one, delete the ones nobody can explain, and rebuild the rest as HubSpot workflows after the data is in.
• Custom fields. These need HubSpot properties with matching field types. Smart Transfer can map them with Data Hub. Without it, create the properties first and import by file.
• User mapping. Every record owner in Pipedrive needs a HubSpot user before the sync, or ownership falls over. Do this for people who have left too: decide who inherits their deals.
• Files. Attachments come across once. Files stored in Google Drive and linked from Pipedrive are left out of Pipedrive's global export, so check where your proposals and contracts actually sit.

Clean it before it moves

Every migration copies the mess along with the data. Do this in Pipedrive, before the first sync:

• Merge duplicate people and organisations. HubSpot uses email to match contacts and domain to match companies, so two Pipedrive people with the same email end up as one HubSpot contact with both histories mixed together.
• Close or delete dead deals. Anything open with no activity in a year is reporting noise. Mark it lost with a reason.
• Audit custom fields. Export the field list, mark each one keep, merge or drop, and note its type.
• Fix pipelines and stages. If you are changing your sales process, change it on paper first, then map old stages to new ones. Our guide to mapping your sales process before CRM onboarding walks through it.
• List users and owners. Who is active, who has left, who inherits what.
• Agree what not to bring. Old leads with no email, test records, five-year-old lost deals. Leaving them behind is a decision, so write it down.

For the full field-by-field version, use our data migration checklist for a CRM with years of history in it.

What order should you migrate in?

Things that other records point at go first. A deal needs its contacts and company to exist before it can be associated with them.

1. Users, teams and currencies. So every record has an owner on arrival.
2. Properties and pipelines. Custom properties with the right types, and the deal pipelines with their stages.
3. Companies, then contacts. Then the associations between them.
4. Products. Before deals, so line items have something to point at.
5. Deals. With their contacts, companies and line items.
6. Activities and notes. Calls, meetings, tasks, notes and email activities, with their original dates.
7. Files and the one-time extras. Attachments, deal participants and organisation relationships.
8. Workflows. Rebuilt last, and switched on only after the data has been checked.

Smart Transfer follows roughly this order for you: audit, configure, sync, then the one-time transfers, then clean up. If you import by file, follow it yourself.

How do you keep both running during cutover?

This is where Smart Transfer earns its keep. HubSpot says that after the initial sync finishes, the sync keeps running in the background. It only goes one way, Pipedrive into HubSpot, which suits a cutover.

From HubSpot's Smart Transfer documentation as summarised in this post. Anything moved in a one-time transfer stays as it was on the day it ran.

• Weeks before cutover. Run the sync. Pipedrive stays the system your team works in. HubSpot fills up behind it while you build reports, workflows and train people.
• Test week. A few reps work in HubSpot on test deals. Compare record counts and pipeline totals against Pipedrive. Fix mappings and resync.
• Cutover day. Pick a quiet day, ideally not month end. Everyone stops editing Pipedrive, the last sync runs, then the one-time transfers, then workflows go on.
• After. Set Pipedrive to read only for a month so people can check history, then export a full archive before you cancel.

The rule that matters: nobody edits the same deal in both systems. Changes made in HubSpot do not go back to Pipedrive, and one-time transfers do not update.

How long does it take, and what does it cost?

Here is how the weeks usually fall for a 50 to 250 person business with one main pipeline:

Add two to six weeks when you connect other systems, such as Xero, an ERP or a quoting tool, or when you have a lot of automations to rebuild. Our implementation page puts a guided build at four to six weeks and a full implementation with migration and integrations at eight to twelve.

Straight move, one or two hubs4 to 6 weeks

With integrations and automation rebuilds8 to 12 weeks

Typical ranges for a 50 to 250 person business, from this post. Each bar shows the top of its range.

On cost, there are two parts. The HubSpot licence is paid to HubSpot, and the migration needs a Data Hub subscription on top if you want custom fields and activities moved by Smart Transfer. Check HubSpot's pricing page for your seat count. Then the implementation: ours start from about $7,000 plus the HubSpot licence for a guided build of one or two hubs, and a full implementation with a migration and integrations is priced once we have seen the account. Our guide to how CRM setup pricing works covers where scope tends to grow.

When should you stay on Pipedrive?

Pipedrive is a good sales pipeline tool. Moving costs time, money and a few weeks of your sales team's attention. Stay put if most of these are true:

• Your sales team is small, uses Pipedrive daily and likes it.
• Marketing, service and finance do not need to see or act on CRM data.
• Your reporting questions are about the pipeline, and Pipedrive answers them.
• No one is spending hours a week copying data between Pipedrive and other tools.

The move starts to pay when marketing needs to know which campaigns produce revenue, service needs the deal history, or leadership wants one set of numbers across teams. For a team that size, plan the first three months properly: our 90-day CRM adoption plan covers it.

Frequently asked questions

Can HubSpot import data directly from Pipedrive? Yes. HubSpot Smart Transfer lists Pipedrive as a supported app and moves people, organisations, deals, notes, products, users, currencies and activities into HubSpot. Only a Super Admin can run it, and custom field mappings and activities need a Data Hub subscription.

Does email history move from Pipedrive to HubSpot? Partly. HubSpot says Smart Transfer syncs Pipedrive email activities but not logged emails, so check how your team captured email before you rely on it coming across.

How long does a Pipedrive to HubSpot migration take? Four to six weeks for a straight move of one or two hubs at a 50 to 250 person business. Allow eight to twelve weeks when integrations and automation rebuilds are in scope.

Do Pipedrive automations transfer to HubSpot? No. HubSpot's Pipedrive mapping does not include automations, so list them, drop the ones nobody needs and rebuild the rest as HubSpot workflows.

Can you run Pipedrive and HubSpot side by side during the move? Yes. Smart Transfer keeps syncing from Pipedrive into HubSpot after the first sync, one way only, so your team keeps working in Pipedrive until cutover day.

Sources

• Transfer data from other apps using HubSpot Smart Transfer, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for permissions, Data Hub requirement, steps and the ongoing one-way sync.
• Supported apps for HubSpot Smart Transfer, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for the Pipedrive object mapping, email and one-time transfer limits.
• Set up your import file, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for file limits, activity imports and associations.
• Exporting data from Pipedrive, Pipedrive Knowledge Base, for export types, formats, permissions and Google Drive files.
• Deals API, Pipedrive Developers, for the deal changelog and flow endpoints.
• HubSpot implementation, Neighbourhood, for our timelines and starting price.

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Planning the move? See our CRM implementation and HubSpot implementation work, or talk to us.