Move from HubSpot to Attio without the headache

A HubSpot account used for two or three years collects properties, lifecycle stages, pipelines and workflows that made sense once and no longer do. Move all of it into Attio and the new tool looks like the old one in a different colour.

Run this on a whiteboard with the team before touching HubSpot. The result almost always cuts the property count by 40 to 60 percent.

• Which objects do you actually need? Contacts, Companies and Deals certainly. Then: which custom objects carry real business logic, and which are leftover experiments?
• Which properties matter? For each object, which ones feed an active view, report or automation? Everything else is a deletion candidate.
• Which relationships matter? Company hierarchies, deal associations, contact roles — which connections have to cross over?

Set expectations early. Core CRM data moves cleanly: contacts, companies, deals, custom properties, notes, tasks, activities and custom objects all have a home in Attio. The marketing half of HubSpot does not.

• Marketing emails, templates and sequences.
• Landing pages, forms and CTAs.
• Lead scoring models.
• Ad accounts and attribution reports.
• Chatbots and live chat routing.

Import2 is Attio's partner for one-click migrations, and it is free when you start it from the Migrate button inside Attio. It moves Companies (deduped by domain), Contacts (deduped by email), Deals, Notes, Tasks, Calls (as Notes) and Leads (as Contacts). It does not move emails, meetings or file attachments.

Manual CSV is more work, and worth it when the data model changes significantly during the move, when you need full control over field mapping, or when you have custom objects with complex relationships. Most migrations land in a hybrid: Import2 for the core objects, CSV or API for the rest.

Three HubSpot settings to disable before you start, per Import2's own guidance: "assign company owner to contact by default", which overwrites the owner Import2 just imported; "create and associate companies with contacts", which builds a company from the email domain and duplicates what Import2 already moved; and HubSpot Insights, which auto-fills fields from HubSpot's own database and cannot be switched off — freeze changes during the window if accuracy matters.

Use CSV rather than XLSX: no column limits and cleaner to diff. Export each object separately from its list view.

• Choose "All properties on records", not "Properties on view". The view option only exports the visible columns, and partial exports make partial records.
• Set associations to "All associated records" rather than the default 1,000 cap. This matters for deals tied to many contacts.
• Keep the HubSpot record ID column in every export. It is the only reliable way to reconnect relationships after import.
• For large accounts use the API export endpoint, POST /crm/v3/exports/export/async, which handles bigger datasets than the UI exporter and can be scripted for repeat passes.

HubSpot Contacts become Attio People, Companies become Companies, Deals become Deals, and custom objects become custom objects. Tickets have no direct equivalent — most teams rebuild them as a custom object or move support into a dedicated tool. Recreate HubSpot deal stages as Attio statuses in the same order with the same names, so reporting continuity holds.

• Merge or remove duplicate people and companies. HubSpot accounts carry duplicates from form submissions and email sync.
• Standardise picklist values: one spelling per lifecycle stage, deal source and industry. Normalise phone numbers, dates and country codes.
• Drop every column that did not make the data model cut, and fill required fields — Attio rejects rows missing required attributes, so you catch them now rather than later.
• Import Companies first, then People linked to Companies, then Deals linked to both. Notes, activities and custom objects last.
• Map the HubSpot ID to an external identifier during the import, and spot-check 10 to 20 records per file.

HubSpot workflows do not port one to one, so do not try. Audit the workflow list first — in most accounts half are off, broken, or doing nothing, and those stay behind. Attio's automation builder is simple enough that the essential set takes an hour or two, and most teams end up with fewer, cleaner automations than they had.

HubSpot reports do not migrate either. Recreate each one somebody actually opens as an Attio view or dashboard widget: a weekly pipeline view, a monthly activity summary by owner, a deal-stage funnel. Most accounts find a large share of their saved reports have not been opened in months.

• Lead assignment by owner, territory or round robin.
• Stage-change triggers that create tasks or post Slack messages.
• Deal-won notifications.
• Activity creation from calendar and email sync.
• Lifecycle-stage progression rules.

Run both systems in parallel for a week: the team works in Attio, HubSpot stays read-only as a reference. Then archive HubSpot and keep read access for 30 to 60 days before cancelling. If marketing workflows still live there, keep a reduced seat count for the marketing side and sync CRM data between the two — plenty of teams run that way for six to twelve months before consolidating.

For a typical team under 50 users with a handful of custom objects, budget two to three weeks end to end. The data movement itself takes two to three days; the rest is the model rebuild, automation rework and training. Heavy marketing workflows that need a replacement tool push it to four to six weeks.

• Migrating every property. Prune hard, or Attio ends up as cluttered as the account you left.
• Porting every workflow instead of rebuilding the few that matter.
• Exporting with "Properties on view" instead of "All properties".
• Dropping the HubSpot record ID, which turns any reimport into guesswork.
• Cancelling HubSpot before the parallel week is done.
• Forgetting the marketing assets. Emails, sequences and landing pages do not move; plan the replacement before cutover.