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Import Your CRM Data to HubSpot in Hours, Not Weeks

Your data moves as fast as your business. Migrate contacts, deals, and companies from Excel, Salesforce, or another CRM with our smart import tools, so you can keep growing without missing any opportunities.

Why Import into HubSpot?

As you work to adopt HubSpot, one of your first tasks will inevitably be bringing your data into the CRM. Whether you previously ran your business out of Excel, or were leveraging a legacy CRM to store your data, HubSpot’s import tools make it easy to move your data quickly, while giving you the confidence that your data will be accurate and actionable by your team.
hubspot user interface showing objects to import

Import and associate all of the data that's important to your business.

You do business with more than just contacts. You’re also engaging with companies, closing deals, and resolving tickets. Maybe you even have a custom object or two. Regardless of how you track your data, import enables you to quickly reflect your business processes in HubSpot. Associate your data across objects to provide additional context and give your team the full picture of who you’re doing business with.

hubspot user interface showing ability to map columns to contact properties

Make data mapping and error validation easy.

The only thing worse than cleaning a spreadsheet of data is realizing you skipped cleaning a column of data after you finished your import. That’s why HubSpot’s import tool does work up front to auto-map your data to existing HubSpot properties and surface errors in your spreadsheet before you finish your import. This way, you can rest assured that your data will be clean and actionable from the start.

lists in hubspot

Take action on your data immediately.

Once your data’s in HubSpot, you’re off to the races. Auto-fill missing contact or company information using AI. Fix small formatting issues with our data quality tools. Create filtered views for specific reps or spin up automations to take the busy work out of managing your data. With your data accurately reflected in the CRM, you’re able to focus less on data management and more on growing your business.

What can I import into HubSpot?

HubSpot’s import tools make it simple to get your data into the CRM – but having a basic understanding of the different data points you’re able to import will help you match your existing business processes to the HubSpot data model. Below are the specific elements of HubSpot’s data model you’re able to import. For help formatting your files, take a look at the instructions and example files found here.

Objects

Objects are the primary pieces of information that you’re tracking in the CRM. This could be contacts, companies, and deals, or you could have created custom objects to meet your business’ specific needs. Each object will have many individual records – the rows in your spreadsheet. You’ll store information on these records in properties – represented by columns in your spreadsheet.

Each object has specific properties that are needed to create new records or find and update existing records within the import. These properties will be highlighted on the import mapping guide within the import tool.

Associations

Associations can be used to show the relationship between records. By creating associations between records in the CRM, your team will be able to see information across all associated records quickly and easily to do their job faster with more context.

Let’s imagine you’re importing a spreadsheet of contacts and want to associate them with the companies they work for. If you’re importing one file, simply include the company information on the same row as their associated contacts in your file. If you have two files of data, you’ll need to ensure there is a common column of data between your two files to create the association. You can also add a label that describes the relationship between these two records.

Activities

Activities are the different engagements that your team in HubSpot has with the records in the CRM. They could be leaving notes on an open deal, meeting with a company, or calling a prospective customer. Just like you can create and associate records via import, you can create and associate activities using the import tool.

Once imported into the CRM, you can use these activities to report out on the productivity of your team and see who your top performers are.

Related Resources

Moving to a new CRM might seem intimidating — the last thing you want is to lose any of your organization's vital historical data. To help you as you begin importing, check out the following resources that break down all you need to know about HubSpot’s import tool.
  • For step-by-step instructions on how to import records and activities, check out this article.
  • For help with reviewing and troubleshooting import errors, check out this article.
  • If you want to leverage our Imports API, check out these developer docs.

Other methods for migrating your data into HubSpot.

There are many factors to consider when choosing the best method for bringing your data into HubSpot. Depending on the technical resources at your disposal, where your data currently resides, and whether or not you intend to sync data between HubSpot and another system, there are several options beyond import that you can consider for your data migration.

Data Sync

Create a recurring sync between HubSpot and another tool you and your team use to ensure your data is up to date across all the systems important to your business.
Learn more

Third-Party Integrations

Additional platforms are available to help bring your data into HubSpot. Companies like Import2 and SyncMatters provide data migration services from nearly every major CRM on the market and can help with more nuanced migration projects.
Learn more

HubSpot Technical Consultant

Work directly with a HubSpot consultant through all the nuances of your data migration. Build out custom solutions and ensure you’re following best practices throughout the process of moving over to the HubSpot CRM.
Learn more

API Endpoints

If you have technical resources at your disposal, HubSpot's APIs will help you automate your data migration and customize the data ingestion to meet your specific needs.

Learn more

Frequently Asked Questions

HubSpot's Smart CRM unifies customer data, teams, and tech stacks to create more personalized customer experiences at scale.

Getting familiar with the different importable data types will help you seamlessly integrate your current workflows with HubSpot's platform. The following section outlines the key elements you can import into HubSpot's Smart CRM.

Records:

  • Contacts (with email addresses, names, company information, and custom properties)
  • Companies (with domain names, industry details, and firmographic data)
  • Deals (with pipeline stages, values, and associated contacts/companies)
  • Tickets (with status, priority, and customer information)
  • Commerce objects (including carts, line items, orders, products, services, and subscriptions)
  • Custom objects (tailored to your unique business needs)

Activities

  • Emails
  • Meetings and calls
  • Notes and tasks
  • Custom activities specific to your sales process

Key Features

  • Expanded objects support for complex data structures
  • Custom properties to match your existing business processes
  • Deduplication capabilities to prevent duplicate records
  • Data consistency across systems

For detailed information about what can be migrated from your existing CRM to the HubSpot CRM, visit our import migration guide.

Absolutely. Your data is secure when importing into HubSpot. Security is rated as the most important attribute by our customers, and HubSpot takes comprehensive measures to protect your data throughout the import process.

We use granular permissions to control who can import and access data, permission risk management, and sensitive data handling capabilities. You must have special permissions to import and edit the object records you're importing. This will ensure that only people who are allowed to do this can do data imports.

The platform also includes centralized compliance management and field-level permissions for more regulated organizations that require advanced data governance.

HubSpot's security and compliance features are designed for large companies. They give businesses the control they need while making HubSpot easy to use for teams of all sizes.

Yes. HubSpot supports importing data from multiple CRM platforms and consolidating them into a unified customer data platform.

Popular CRM migrations include:

  • Salesforce (our most common competitor migration)
  • Microsoft Dynamics
  • Pipedrive

Ready to see your potential ROI? Calculate the return on investment you could experience with HubSpot's products based on aggregated data from 238,000+ HubSpot customers globally using our ROI Calculator.

Import times vary based on several factors.

Factors affecting import speed:

  • File size and complexity
  • Number of properties being mapped
  • Data validation and formatting requirements
  • Whether you're creating new records or updating existing ones
  • Current system load and processing queue

Pro tip: HubSpot processes imports in the background, so you can continue working while your data imports. 

HubSpot's Smart CRM includes AI-powered deduplication that automatically identifies and manages duplicate records during import. 

How duplicates are handled:

  • Update existing records: If a match is found, new data updates the existing record

  • Merge similar records: AI identifies potential duplicates for your review

  • Prevent duplicate creation: System blocks obvious duplicates from being created

The deduplication process runs continuously, helping to maintain clean data as your business grows.

Our import tools are designed to handle everything from simple contact lists to complex multi-system migrations.

Need help with your specific import situation? Visit our import knowledge base.