HubSpot to Zoho CRM Migration: How to Switch Without Losing Contacts or History

Switching CRMs mid-business is never trivial, but the HubSpot to Zoho CRM migration path has become increasingly well-trodden as companies hit HubSpot’s pricing ceiling or need deeper customisation than the free tier provides. The good news: Zoho CRM’s import tools and field mapping capabilities are genuinely capable of handling the full switch without data loss — if you follow the right sequence. This guide walks through every stage of the migration process, from auditing your HubSpot account before you touch the export button to validating your Zoho CRM data after go-live. No contacts will be left behind, and your deal history will make it across intact.

Why Businesses Move from HubSpot to Zoho CRM

The most common trigger for a HubSpot to Zoho CRM migration is pricing. HubSpot’s free CRM is genuinely useful for early-stage teams, but as soon as you need features like custom reporting, sequences, or advanced pipeline management, you move into the Starter or Professional tiers, which run from $20 to $890 per month per seat. Zoho CRM Professional costs a fraction of that, with equivalent or stronger automation capabilities at the mid-market level.

Beyond price, these are the reasons teams cite most often when making the switch:

• Customisation depth: Zoho CRM supports custom modules, multi-page layouts, subforms, and Canvas (a drag-and-drop record UI builder) that HubSpot restricts to its enterprise tier.
• Integration with Zoho’s suite: If you are already using Zoho Books, Zoho Desk, or Zoho Campaigns, a native CRM makes data flow without third-party connectors.
• Workflow automation limits: HubSpot’s automation is capped by tier. Zoho CRM’s workflow, blueprint, and macro engine is fully available at the Professional level.
• AI and analytics: Zoho Zia provides lead scoring, deal prediction, and anomaly detection at price points well below HubSpot’s equivalent.

For a full feature-by-feature breakdown, the Zoho CRM vs HubSpot comparison covers where each platform wins and where the trade-offs sit.

Pre-Migration Audit: What to Do Before You Export Anything

Rushing the export is the single biggest mistake in CRM migrations. Spend time auditing your HubSpot account first and you will avoid importing thousands of duplicate or stale records into your new system.

Clean your HubSpot data before exporting

• Deduplicate contacts: HubSpot’s built-in deduplication tool (Settings > Data Management > Duplicates) flags obvious matches. Run it and merge before export.
• Purge bounced and unsubscribed contacts: If you are not migrating your email marketing history to Zoho Campaigns, there is no reason to carry dead contacts into the new CRM.
• Archive closed-lost deals older than 24 months: Unless your sales cycle analysis requires them, old lost deals create noise in Zoho CRM pipelines.
• Document custom properties: Open HubSpot Settings > Properties and list every custom contact, company, and deal property. You will need to recreate these as custom fields in Zoho CRM before importing.

Map your objects to Zoho CRM modules

HubSpot and Zoho CRM use different terminology for the same objects. Get this mapping right before you build import templates:

For a broader view of how Zoho handles imported data across its ecosystem, the Zoho data migration guide covers considerations that apply across CRM, Books, and Desk.

Exporting Data from HubSpot

HubSpot allows full CSV exports for all major objects. Work through each object type in sequence rather than exporting everything at once — this keeps file sizes manageable and lets you validate each batch before moving to the next.

Contacts

1. Go to CRM > Contacts, select all records, and click Export.
2. Select all properties you want to migrate, including any custom properties from your audit.
3. Choose CSV format. HubSpot emails a download link within a few minutes for large lists.
4. Open the CSV, check column headers, and remove any columns you do not plan to import (e.g., internal HubSpot IDs, subscription status fields that do not map to Zoho).

Companies

Export via CRM > Companies using the same method. The key fields to preserve are company name, domain, industry, annual revenue, and any custom properties you have built. The domain field is useful for deduplication in Zoho CRM later.

Deals

Export from CRM > Deals. Include deal name, associated contact email, associated company name, pipeline, deal stage, amount, close date, and owner. The association fields (contact email, company name) are how Zoho CRM will link the deal to existing records on import.

Notes and Activity History

This is where most migrations lose data. HubSpot does not provide a clean native export of notes and activities into a format Zoho CRM can import directly. Your options:

• Manual export + CSV import: For notes, use HubSpot’s engagement export (available via the API or from your account manager) and format the output as Zoho CRM’s Notes import CSV template.
• Third-party migration tool: Tools like Trujay, Data2CRM, or Skyvia can automate note and activity migration between HubSpot and Zoho CRM, preserving timestamps and associations. These cost between $50 and $300 depending on record volume.
• Accept a clean-start for activities: If your team only needs contact and deal data, skip activity history and start fresh. Most teams find this acceptable for activities older than 12 months.

Setting Up Zoho CRM Before You Import

Do not import into a default Zoho CRM instance. Spend time configuring the system to receive your data correctly, or you will spend days cleaning up mismatched records after the fact.

Create custom fields to match HubSpot properties

In Zoho CRM, go to Setup > Customisation > Modules and Fields. For each custom HubSpot property you documented in your audit, create a matching custom field with the correct field type (text, number, date, picklist). The field label does not need to match exactly, but the data type must align — importing a date into a text field creates formatting problems that are tedious to fix at scale.

Configure your pipeline and stages

Zoho CRM’s default pipeline stages will not match HubSpot’s. Before importing deals, go to Setup > CRM Settings > Pipelines and recreate your HubSpot deal stages exactly. Once the import is complete and validated, you can rename or consolidate stages, but the initial import needs an exact stage name match.

Set up user accounts and ownership

Every deal and contact record in HubSpot has an owner. Create matching user accounts in Zoho CRM (or invite existing users) before importing, so ownership fields resolve correctly. If a HubSpot owner’s email does not match a Zoho CRM user, those records will be assigned to the import admin account by default.

Effective contact management in Zoho CRM depends on getting field mappings and ownership right from day one — retrofitting these after a large import is significantly more work.

Importing Data into Zoho CRM

Import in this exact sequence: Accounts first, then Contacts, then Deals. Importing in the wrong order breaks associations because Zoho CRM needs the parent record to exist before it can link a child record to it.

Step 1: Import Accounts (Companies)

1. In Zoho CRM, go to the Accounts module and click Import.
2. Upload your HubSpot companies CSV.
3. Map columns: Company Name → Account Name, Domain → Website, Industry → Industry. Map any custom fields you created.
4. Set duplicate handling to Update existing records if you have run any test imports, or Add new records only for a clean first import.
5. Review the mapping summary and confirm.

Step 2: Import Contacts

1. Go to the Contacts module and click Import.
2. Upload your HubSpot contacts CSV.
3. Map Email to Email, First Name to First Name, Last Name to Last Name. Map the Company Name column to Account Name — Zoho CRM will attempt to link contacts to accounts based on this field.
4. Map owner email to Record Owner.
5. For any custom HubSpot properties, map to the corresponding custom fields you created in the setup step.
6. Run the import and download the error log. Review every error — most are field type mismatches or missing required fields.

Step 3: Import Deals

1. Go to the Deals module and click Import.
2. Map Deal Name, Amount, Close Date, Stage (must match your configured stage names exactly), and Contact Email (for association).
3. If any deals fail to associate with contacts, the deal still imports but remains unlinked. Fix these manually or via a bulk update after import.

Preserving Deal History and Notes

The most common complaint after a CRM migration is that deal history has gone missing. Here is how to preserve it systematically:

Notes import via CSV

Zoho CRM accepts notes via CSV import through the Notes module (Setup > Data Administration > Import). The required columns are Note Title, Note Content, Parent Module (Contacts or Deals), and Parent ID (the Zoho CRM record ID of the associated contact or deal). Because Zoho CRM IDs are only assigned during import, you need to export your imported records, capture the Zoho CRM IDs, and use those as the Parent ID column in your notes import file. This is a two-pass process but it correctly preserves note associations.

Timeline summary note approach

A faster alternative: for each deal, create a single “Migration Summary” note that captures the key activity history as a text block. Export the HubSpot deal timeline as CSV, group entries by deal, and generate a summary note per deal. This approach loses individual timestamps but keeps the substantive history in the record and takes a fraction of the time to implement.

Using Zoho CRM’s History tab

After import, Zoho CRM automatically begins logging all new activities (calls, emails, meetings) in the Timeline tab on every record. You cannot backfill this with historical HubSpot data, but you can use the Notes approach above to provide context for your team.

Post-Migration Validation Checklist

Do not declare the migration complete until you have run through this validation sequence:

• Record count check: Compare total contacts, accounts, and deals in HubSpot vs Zoho CRM. A variance of more than 2% warrants investigation.
• Spot-check 20 random contacts: Open each in both systems and verify all custom field values match.
• Verify deal-to-contact associations: Check 10 deals and confirm the associated contact and account are correctly linked.
• Owner verification: Filter deals by owner in Zoho CRM and confirm records are distributed correctly, not all assigned to the admin account.
• Pipeline stage distribution: Compare the count of deals per stage in HubSpot vs Zoho CRM. Mismatches usually indicate a stage name mismatch during import.
• Custom field values: Select 5 contacts with non-empty custom fields in HubSpot and verify the same values appear in the corresponding Zoho CRM fields.
• Email integration: After migration, reconnect your team’s email accounts in Zoho CRM (Gmail or Outlook via Zoho’s email sync). HubSpot email connections do not transfer.

Common Mistakes That Cause Data Loss

Based on migrations handled across multiple clients, these are the failure modes that cause the most post-migration cleanup work:

• Importing contacts before accounts: Zoho CRM cannot link a contact to an account that does not exist yet. Always import accounts first.
• Mismatched pipeline stage names: If “Proposal Sent” in HubSpot is “Proposal” in Zoho CRM, deals import with an empty stage field and become invisible in the pipeline view.
• Ignoring field type mismatches: A HubSpot number field exported as “1,200.00” will fail to import into a Zoho CRM integer field. Pre-process CSVs to remove formatting before importing.
• Not testing with a sample: Always run a 50-record test import before the full migration. This surfaces mapping issues before they affect thousands of records.
• Forgetting email opt-in status: If you collect marketing consent, map HubSpot’s subscription status to a Zoho CRM custom field or to Zoho Campaigns opt-in status, depending on how you manage email in the new setup.

A HubSpot to Zoho CRM migration done in the right sequence is far more predictable than most teams expect. The critical discipline is preparation: clean your data before exporting, configure Zoho CRM before importing, and validate systematically before switching your team over. With those three steps in place, the migration carries minimal risk and sets your team up on a platform with considerably more headroom for customisation and growth.