Last month, a founder named Sarah emailed us with a familiar story. She had been using HubSpot's free CRM for two years with her three-person sales team. The product had grown around them. Features they did not use cluttered every screen. The interface had gotten slower with each quarterly update. But every time she considered switching, the same fear stopped her: migrating 2,400 contacts and 180 active deals felt like a week-long project she could not afford.
We asked Sarah to try the migration on a Tuesday afternoon with a timer running. She finished in 4 minutes and 38 seconds. This is the exact process she followed.
The biggest barrier to switching CRMs is not the product difference. It is the perceived pain of migration. Remove that pain and the decision becomes obvious.
In HubSpot, go to Contacts, then click "Actions" in the top right, then "Export." Choose CSV format. HubSpot generates a file with every contact field you have ever used, including custom properties. Do the same for Deals: go to Sales, then Deals, then Actions, then Export. You now have two CSV files on your desktop.
Sarah's contacts export was 2,400 rows and 42 columns. Her deals export was 180 rows and 28 columns. Both files downloaded in under 10 seconds. HubSpot does not throttle exports on the free tier, which is one of the few things about their free plan that works well.
In SalesSheet, go to Settings, then Import, then drag your contacts CSV onto the upload area. SalesSheet's importer detects that the file came from HubSpot automatically. It recognizes HubSpot's column naming conventions, things like "First Name," "Last Name," "Email," "Company Name," "Deal Stage," and "Amount," and maps them to SalesSheet fields without you touching anything.
The auto-mapping handles 90% of columns correctly on the first try. For the remaining columns, usually custom properties unique to your HubSpot setup, a mapping screen lets you assign them to existing SalesSheet fields or create new custom fields on the spot. Sarah had 4 custom columns (Lead Source, Industry, Account Tier, and NPS Score). She mapped three to existing fields and created one new custom field. Total time on the mapping screen: 30 seconds.
HubSpot exports "First Name" and "Last Name" as separate columns, which maps cleanly. But if you are importing from a different source that has a single "Full Name" column, SalesSheet automatically splits it into first and last name using an AI model that handles edge cases like "Mary Jane Watson-Parker" or "Juan Carlos de la Cruz" correctly. No manual splitting required.
Before importing, SalesSheet shows a preview of the first 10 rows with the mapped fields. You can scroll through and verify that names, emails, and deal values look correct. A validation panel on the right highlights any issues: duplicate emails, missing required fields, or values that do not match expected formats (like a phone number in an email field).
Sarah's import had 12 duplicate contacts (same email appearing twice in HubSpot, usually from merge errors). SalesSheet flagged them and offered three options: skip duplicates, merge them, or import both. She chose merge, which combined the duplicate records and kept the most recent data for any conflicting fields.
After contacts finish importing, repeat the process with your deals CSV. SalesSheet maps HubSpot deal stages to its default pipeline stages. If your HubSpot pipeline uses custom stages, the mapper shows each one and lets you assign it to a SalesSheet stage or create a matching one. Deal values, close dates, and owner assignments all transfer automatically.
The critical detail here is that SalesSheet links deals to contacts using the email address as the join key. If a deal in HubSpot was associated with "jane@acmecorp.com," and that contact exists in SalesSheet from the contacts import you just did, the deal links automatically. Sarah's 180 deals all linked correctly to their associated contacts. Zero orphaned deals.
Once the import completes, SalesSheet kicks off Layer 0 enrichment on all imported contacts. Within 30 seconds, company logos appear next to contact names, headquarters locations fill in, and employee count ranges populate. The contacts that were just rows in a spreadsheet 4 minutes ago now have rich profiles with company context.
Sarah told us the enrichment step was the moment she knew she was not going back to HubSpot. "In two years on HubSpot, half my contacts had no company logo and no employee count. SalesSheet filled those in automatically in 30 seconds."
CRM migrations always have one limitation: activity history (emails sent, calls logged, notes written) does not transfer perfectly between systems. HubSpot's CSV export includes some activity data, but it is not structured in a way that maps cleanly to another CRM's activity timeline.
SalesSheet handles this pragmatically. When you import contacts, any notes or activity columns in the CSV are imported as a single "Migration Notes" field on each contact. You do not lose the data, but it appears as a text block rather than a structured timeline. Going forward, all new activities (emails, calls, notes) are tracked natively in SalesSheet's timeline with full structure.
For most teams, this tradeoff is acceptable. The historical data is there if you need to reference it, and within a few weeks of active use, the SalesSheet timeline becomes the definitive record anyway. If you need a complete historical migration with structured activity data, our team can do a custom migration using HubSpot's API. Email andres@salessheets.ai and we will set it up.
Sarah's reasons for switching were common among our HubSpot migration users:
The migration took 4 minutes and 38 seconds. The decision to switch took two years. Do not let migration fear keep you on a CRM that does not serve you.
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