There is no native migration path from Affinity to Attio. Affinity organizes everything around lists and list entries with a single-list-per-opportunity model, rich interaction timelines, and entity files. Attio models data as objects and records added to lists as entries, with first-class APIs for records, notes, and threads. The fundamental gap is structural: Affinity separates entity data from field values and distinguishes internal persons from external contacts under one object, while Attio enforces a clean split between People and Users with object-level and list-level attributes. Every migration requires custom API work to split persons, recreate list schemas with their specific attributes, route interactions between native sync and API-created notes, and externalize file storage with link-back references.
Read this first
Pair-specific gotchas that catch teams out. Each one has cost somebody a weekend.
Affinity was acquired by Salesforce, which makes the future of Affinity's standalone API uncertain
If you're considering this migration, factor in that the extraction side of this process may change or become unavailable. Moving sooner reduces risk.
Rate limits matter for planning
Affinity's API enforces a rate limit of roughly 900 requests per minute. Attio also enforces rate limits on its v2 API. For large workspaces, these limits directly determine how long the migration takes. Factor them into your timeline: for example, extracting 50,000 person records from Affinity at full speed requires roughly 55 minutes of paginated reads alone, before accounting for per-record field-value fetches. Build in headroom for retries and back-off.
Error handling and retries
Expect transient failures during the full run — 429 (rate limit), 500 (server error), and occasional 409 (conflict) responses are normal at scale. Your migration script should implement exponential backoff with jitter on retries. Log every failed request with enough context (entity type, source ID, HTTP status, response body) to replay it later. Because every write uses an idempotent Assert keyed on a matching attribute, retrying a failed request is safe and will not create duplicates.
Rollback plan
Before cutting over, snapshot your Attio workspace state (export key objects or record the assert log with source IDs). If something goes wrong post-cutover, you can delete the migrated records in Attio by iterating through your migration log and issuing deletes by record ID. Affinity data remains untouched as long as you only performed reads against it, so the source of truth is still intact until you explicitly decommission it.
The runbook
Work top to bottom. Tick steps as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.
01 Discovery Agree scope, pipeline design and success criteria before touching data.
Objective A scope covering every object in the revenue model, with sales leadership signed up to the pipeline design.
Keep these open
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Inventory every object in Affinity
Count accounts, contacts, leads, deals or opportunities, activities, notes, emails, files, products and quotes. Activity and email history is usually the largest object by an order of magnitude and the one people forget to size.
Data Profiler Get real record counts instead of estimating from memory -
Map the current pipeline and agree the target model
Document every pipeline, stage, probability and required field, then agree the Attio model with sales leadership. Migrating a broken pipeline faithfully is a wasted opportunity; redesigning it mid-migration is a wasted migration.
Stage changes alter historical conversion rates. Agree how you will restate reporting before you change the model.
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Catalogue integrations and automation
List every system touching Affinity: marketing automation, quoting, billing, ERP, data enrichment, dialler, BI. Each is a separate cutover task with its own owner, and each can silently write bad data into your new CRM.
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Capture the reporting that must survive
Interview the people who actually live in the dashboards — forecast, pipeline coverage, rep activity, cohort conversion. Every one of these needs the underlying fields to migrate, which frequently expands the scope.
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Build the business case and pick the go-live date
Model licence delta, implementation effort and productivity dip. Then choose the date deliberately: mid-quarter is disruptive, quarter-end is worse. Most teams land on the first week of a new quarter.
COI & ROI Calculator Build the 36-month business case you will need for sign-off
Don't move on until
- Object counts confirmed for accounts, contacts, deals and activities
- Target pipeline and stage model agreed with sales leadership
- Reporting requirements captured from the people who use the reports
02 Data Audit CRM data is usually dirtier than anyone expects. Find out how dirty.
Objective A profiled export with duplicates, ownership gaps and relationship integrity all quantified and triaged.
Keep these open
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Export and profile every object
Profile null rates, distinct values and type consistency across all objects. Pay attention to fields sales reps were supposed to fill in: an 80% null rate on a field your forecast depends on is a business finding, not a data one.
Data Profiler Profile the Affinity export for nulls, outliers and type drift -
Quantify duplicates and agree the merge policy
Measure duplicate accounts (same company, different spellings and suffixes) and contacts (same email, or same person at a renamed company). Agree survivorship rules before merging: which record wins, which fields, and what happens to the activity history on the loser.
Merging before you have agreed survivorship rules destroys history irreversibly. Decide first, merge second.
Data Cleaner Strip empty rows, stray whitespace and dead columns -
Verify relationship integrity
Check every deal has a valid account, every contact a valid account, every activity a valid parent. Referential breaks are the defect that turns a clean-looking load into a CRM where the pipeline report does not tie to the account list.
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Resolve ownership and the user map
Build the Affinity user → Attio user map, including leavers. Every record needs a valid owner: records assigned to deactivated users either fail to load or land unassigned, and unassigned pipeline is pipeline nobody works.
Records owned by deactivated users are a top cause of load failures. Decide the reassignment target before you start.
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Scan for PII and regional compliance
CRMs hold marketing consent, lawful basis and unsubscribe state. Confirm these fields migrate intact and that consent provenance survives — losing consent records is a regulatory problem, not a data-quality one.
PII & Compliance Scanner Find regulated fields before they land in a new system -
Clean, normalise and archive the pre-state
Normalise country and state values, phone formats, currencies and casing, and standardise all timestamps to UTC. Keep an untouched copy of the raw export — it is your only reference if a mapping decision turns out wrong.
Don't move on until
- Duplicate rate quantified per object with a merge policy agreed
- Every record has a valid owner mapped to a target user
- Relationship integrity verified — no orphaned deals or contacts
03 Field Mapping Map objects, relationships and picklists — in that order.
Objective A signed mapping spec that covers objects, relationships, picklist values and currency handling.
Keep these open
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Map objects and their relationships first
Establish how Affinity objects correspond to Attio objects before any field work. Leads-versus-contacts, accounts-versus-organisations and deal hierarchies differ structurally between CRMs, and a field map built on the wrong object model has to be redone.
Schema Mapper Opens pre-loaded with the Affinity → Attio field pair -
Generate and then hand-review the field map
Auto-match both schemas, then review every row. Look hardest at anything named "type", "source", "stage" or "status", where names match and meanings do not.
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Map every picklist value, including retired ones
Enumerate all values on both sides — deal stages, lead sources, industries, statuses — and map each explicitly, including values no longer offered but still present on old records. Unmapped values either fail the row or land as blanks that quietly break segmentation.
Historical records often carry picklist values that were retired years ago and no longer appear in the UI.
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Decide currency, amount and date handling
If you sell in multiple currencies, confirm how Attio stores amounts, exchange rates and dated conversion rates. Recalculating historical deal values at today's rate silently rewrites your revenue history.
Multi-currency deals re-converted at current rates will not tie to your historical reporting or your finance system.
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Determine the load order
Sequence the load so parents exist before children: users, then accounts, then contacts, then deals, then activities and notes. Keep source IDs in custom fields so relationships can be rebuilt by lookup rather than guesswork.
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Freeze the spec and sign off
Version-control the mapping, walk RevOps and sales leadership through the decisions that change reporting, and get written sign-off before the pilot.
Don't move on until
- Object and relationship model mapped and reviewed
- Every picklist value explicitly mapped, including dead values
- Load order determined so parents always exist before children
04 Test Migration Pilot with related records, not a flat sample.
Objective A pilot load whose relationships, ownership and roll-up reporting all verify against source.
Keep these open
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Configure the Attio sandbox to match the agreed model
Build the pipelines, stages, custom fields, record types and user roles first. Load into a default configuration and you will only discover the configuration defects at full scale.
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Select a connected pilot slice
Take complete account trees — 50-100 accounts with all their contacts, deals, activities and files — rather than a flat random sample. Relationship defects are the whole point of a CRM pilot and a flat sample cannot expose them.
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Run the load in dependency order with full logging
Load users, accounts, contacts, deals, then activities, logging every request against its source ID. Note which failures are transient (rate limits, timeouts) and which are structural (validation, missing parent).
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Verify relationships and roll-ups
Confirm every deal sits on the right account with the right owner and stage, and that pipeline totals per account and per rep match Affinity exactly. Roll-up mismatches almost always mean a relationship or currency defect upstream.
Migration Validation Tool Diff the pilot batch against source before scaling up -
Measure throughput and project the full load
Record actual records-per-hour under Attio's API limits and extrapolate, remembering activity history usually dominates volume. If the projection exceeds your window, split the load or trim activity scope now.
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Let reps work the pilot data
Put two or three reps in the sandbox against their own accounts. They spot missing context, wrong owners and unusable notes far faster than any reconciliation script, and their buy-in is what makes adoption work.
Don't move on until
- Relationships intact across the whole pilot slice
- Pipeline roll-ups match source for the pilot accounts
- Reps have worked pilot records and confirmed they are usable
05 Cutover Switch the revenue system with the pipeline intact.
Objective All in-scope CRM data live in Attio, integrations repointed, and reps selling on day one.
Keep these open
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Pre-load history ahead of the freeze
Load closed deals, historical activities and inactive accounts while Affinity stays live. Only open pipeline and the final delta need to move inside the window.
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Publish the cutover runbook
A timed sequence with owners and abort criteria: freeze, final export, delta load, integration switch, smoke test, go/no-go, rep enablement. Pick a window that avoids quarter-end and month-end close.
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Freeze Affinity and take the final delta
Set Affinity read-only and export everything changed since the pre-load. Reps updating deals during an unenforced freeze is the classic way to lose the most recent — and most valuable — pipeline changes.
A rep who updates a deal in the old CRM during the freeze will lose that update permanently.
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Load the delta and reconcile the pipeline
Run the delta, then verify open pipeline value and count per rep against Affinity before anything else. If the pipeline number is wrong on day one, reps stop trusting the system and never fully come back.
Migration Validation Tool Confirm the final delta landed before you reopen -
Repoint every integration and verify with real records
Switch marketing automation, quoting, billing, enrichment, dialler and BI connections, then push a live record through each path. An unrepointed integration writing into the old CRM causes divergence that gets harder to reconcile every day.
Two-way integrations left pointing at the old CRM will keep writing there. Disable them before you switch, not after.
Cron Expression Builder Schedule the delta syncs that run through the freeze -
Go/no-go, then enable the reps
Call the decision explicitly against the exit criteria. Run enablement on real data with their own accounts on screen, and keep Affinity read-only rather than cancelled until validation closes.
Don't move on until
- Historical load complete and reconciled before the freeze
- All integrations repointed and verified end to end
- Reps logged in with pipeline visible and correct
06 Validation Prove the revenue numbers tie out, then close the project.
Objective Reconciled data, forecast parity with pre-migration reporting, and signed acceptance.
Keep these open
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Reconcile every object
Compare counts and values across accounts, contacts, deals, activities and files, plus field-level spot checks on a random sample. Produce a single report suitable for audit and for finance.
Migration Validation Tool Reconcile Affinity and Attio record-for-record -
Tie the pipeline and forecast to baseline
Rebuild forecast, pipeline coverage and win-rate reporting and compare to pre-migration figures. Every variance needs an explanation — most trace back to stage or currency mapping decisions made in Field Mapping.
Stage-model changes will legitimately shift historical conversion rates. Restate the baseline rather than chasing the difference as a defect.
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Verify ownership, visibility and permissions
Confirm every record has the right owner and that sharing rules, territories and role hierarchy give each rep exactly the visibility intended. Over-broad visibility in a CRM is a data-protection issue as much as a config one.
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Re-profile for field completeness
Compare loaded null rates against the source profile per field. A field that arrived empty while counts matched is the failure counts alone cannot detect.
Data Profiler Prove field completeness held up through the load -
Test automation and integration write-back
Fire every workflow, assignment rule, sequence and notification, and confirm each integration writes correctly in both directions. Automation is rebuilt rather than migrated, so it is unproven until observed.
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Sign off and schedule decommission
Get written acceptance against the Discovery criteria, keep Affinity read-only for 30-90 days with a final archive export taken, then diarise cancellation so the contract does not auto-renew.
Don't move on until
- Full reconciliation report complete across all objects
- Forecast and pipeline reports tie to pre-migration baselines
- Acceptance signed and Affinity decommission scheduled
Field mapping reference
The field-by-field mapping for each object. Use this as the starting point for your mapping spec.
Source (Affinity) Target (Attio)
| Affinity field | Attio field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Person (internal and external) | User for internal, Person for external | Build an email-based crosswalk. Match internal Affinity people to Attio Users by email. External contacts become Attio People. |
| Organization | Company | Key on the normalized domain where possible |
| Opportunity | Deal | Preserve stage, value, currency, and dates. Respect Affinity's single-list origin when recreating list membership. |
| List | List | Recreate target lists. Document inclusion criteria if lists are filtered. |
| List Entry | List Entry | Attach each record to the correct list. Keep created and updated timestamps if available. |
| Field | Attribute | Attio attributes can be applied to objects and lists. Map Affinity global fields to object attributes. Map list-specific fields to list attributes. Preserve types and required flags. |
| Tags | Select or Tag attribute | Create a select-type or tag attribute on the relevant Attio object. Map each Affinity tag value to an option. Apply during record assertion. |
| Person ↔ Organization link | People ↔ Company link | Rebuild after both sides exist. Preserve roles if present. |
| Opportunity ↔ Person link | Deal → People link | Link all participating people to a deal. Attio does not have a people → deal link |
| Opportunity ↔ Organization link | Deal → Company link | Link all associated companies to a deal. Attio does not have a company → deal link |
| Interactions (email, meeting, call, chat) | Email and meetings via Attio's native sync. Calls and chats as Notes | Allow Attio's email and calendar connections to backfill and keep syncing. Convert calls and chats into Notes with tags like interaction:call or interaction:chat. Link each note to the related People and, when relevant, the Company or Deal. Preserve timestamps and participants. |
| Notes (often attached to an interaction) | Notes | For each Affinity note tied to an interaction, create one Attio Note and attach it to all People on that interaction. Optionally, also attach to the related Company or Deal for a fuller context. Preserve author, body, and created time. |
| Entity Files | External storage plus Attio links | Upload files to Google Drive or other cloud storage in neat, per-entity folders. In Attio, link these folders to relevant records. |
Risk matrix
Per-object risk for this pair. Plan extra validation around anything marked high.
| Object | Risk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Organizations → Companies | medium | Key on normalized domain where possible; orgs without domains cannot be deduplicated |
| Persons (external) → People | medium | Email-based matching works but contacts without valid emails lose deduplication |
| Persons (internal) → Users | medium | Requires enabling the Users object and building an email-based crosswalk to workspace members |
| Opportunities → Deals | medium | Preserve stage, value, currency, and dates; respect single-list origin |
| Lists → Lists | low | Recreate structure and document inclusion criteria |
| List Entries → List Entries | medium | Maintain created/updated timestamps and populate list-specific attribute values |
| Custom Fields → Attributes | medium | Type mapping between global fields (object attributes) and list-specific fields (list attributes) requires careful planning |
| Interactions → Notes/Sync | high | Complex routing between native email/calendar sync and API-created Notes with tags for calls and chats |
| Notes → Notes | medium | Fan-out required for multi-person notes; one Attio Note per parent record |
| Entity Files → External Storage | high | No direct Attio equivalent; requires uploading to cloud storage and linking folders back to records |
The hard parts
What makes this specific migration difficult, beyond the mechanics.
Person/User Split
Affinity persons include both internal staff and external contacts under one entity, requiring routing to Attio People or Users based on a type flag and email-based crosswalk.
List-Specific Fields
Affinity list-specific fields must map to Attio list attributes while global fields map to object attributes, requiring two-pass schema creation.
Interaction Routing
Emails and meetings rely on Attio's native inbox/calendar sync for backfill. Calls and chats must be converted to Notes with tags and linked to multiple parent records.
Entity File Storage
Attio has no direct file attachment equivalent. Files must be uploaded to external storage and linked back to records via URL attributes or Notes.
Single-List Opportunities
Affinity opportunities belong to exactly one list. The 1:1 relationship between opportunity and list entry must be preserved when asserting Deal entries in Attio.
Tools used in this playbook
All free, all run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.