Migration Playbook

Salesforce Service Cloud HubSpot Service Hub

Salesforce Service Cloud to HubSpot Service Hub: The Complete Migration Playbook

A 42-step runbook across six phases — track your progress, and open the right tool at every step.

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TL;DR

Salesforce to HubSpot Service Hub migration requires API-based ETL for anything beyond flat records. Custom objects need Enterprise, and relationships must load in dependency order.

There is no native one-time migration path from Salesforce Service Cloud to HubSpot Service Hub. Salesforce's Case-centric data model—with lookup relationships to Accounts, Contacts, Assets, Entitlements, Milestones, EmailMessages, and CaseComments—does not map 1:1 to HubSpot's Ticket-and-Engagement model. CSV imports cannot preserve multi-object relationships, so any migration beyond flat records requires API-based ETL using Salesforce Bulk API 2.0 for extraction and HubSpot's CRM v3/v4 batch endpoints for loading, with custom transformation logic to translate the relational structure. Additionally, several Salesforce objects (Entitlements, Milestones, Service Contracts, Field Service objects) have no HubSpot equivalent, and custom objects require a HubSpot Enterprise subscription.

Read this first

Pair-specific gotchas that catch teams out. Each one has cost somebody a weekend.

TL;DR — Migrating from Salesforce Service Cloud to HubSpot Service Hub is a data-model

TL;DR — Migrating from Salesforce Service Cloud to HubSpot Service Hub is a data-model translation project, not a drag-and-drop export. Salesforce Cases, Case Comments, Email Messages, and custom objects do not map 1:1 to HubSpot Tickets and Engagements. CSV imports break multi-object relationships. For anything beyond flat records, you need API-based ETL — extracting via Salesforce Bulk API 2.0, transforming the relational structure, and loading into HubSpot via batch endpoints. Custom objects require HubSpot Enterprise, and some Salesforce objects (Entitlements, Milestones) have no HubSpot equivalent at all.

Custom objects require HubSpot Enterprise

As of mid-2025, Custom Objects remain Enterprise-only across every Hub. If your Salesforce org relies heavily on custom objects and you're targeting HubSpot Professional, those objects have no destination. Plan for this before you scope the project.

Picklist mapping is where data quality breaks

Salesforce picklists with 30+ values need to be mapped to HubSpot dropdown properties that you create before import. Any unmapped value will be rejected by the API with a 400 error: {"status":"error","message":"Property values were not valid","validationResults": [{"name":"status","error":"INVALID_OPTION"}]}. Create all dropdown options in HubSpot first, then validate every source value against the target option set programmatically.

Rate limit strategy matters

HubSpot uses a token bucket model for rate limiting. A batch read of 100 contacts costs 1 request, not 100. Always use batch endpoints. A migration of 500K tickets at 100 per batch = 5,000 API calls for records alone, plus ~250,000 association calls (at 2,000/batch = 125 calls per association type), plus engagement calls. At Enterprise limits (1M requests/day), a 500K-ticket migration with associations and engagements consumes roughly 15–25% of your daily quota per day over a multi-day window. Budget accordingly and avoid running other integrations during the migration window.

The runbook

Work top to bottom. Tick steps as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.

01 Discovery Establish why you are moving, what "done" means, and who signs off. 0/8

Objective A written scope with agreed success criteria, a named owner per workstream, and a budget approved by finance.

  1. Pull the real numbers out of Salesforce Service Cloud

    Support ops 1 day

    Export counts for tickets (open and closed separately), contacts, organisations, attachments, macros, triggers, automations, views and SLA policies. Note the oldest ticket date — history depth drives the whole timeline. Estimating from memory is the single most common cause of a blown migration window.

    Data Profiler Get real record counts instead of estimating from memory
  2. Decide what history actually moves

    Support lead 2 days

    Agree a cut-off with the support lead: all history, last 24 months, or open tickets plus a read-only archive. Every extra year of closed tickets adds API time and cost without adding much agent value. Get this in writing — it is the decision people relitigate mid-cutover.

    A "move everything" default is what turns a two-week migration into a two-month one.

    COI & ROI Calculator Build the 36-month business case you will need for sign-off
  3. Confirm HubSpot Service Hub can hold your support model

    Solution architect 2-3 days

    Walk your current workflow through HubSpot Service Hub: multi-brand, business hours, SLA targets, CSAT, side conversations, public vs internal notes, and any channel you depend on (voice, chat, WhatsApp, social). List anything with no native equivalent — those are project risks, not configuration details.

  4. Build the business case

    Project sponsor 1-2 days

    Model licence delta, migration effort, agent retraining, and the cost of staying put (Cost of Inaction). Executives approve a number, not a plan, and you will be asked for it again at the go/no-go.

    Helpdesk Migration Planner Turn ticket volume into a dated Salesforce Service Cloud → HubSpot Service Hub timeline
  5. Name owners and set the go/no-go date

    Project manager 1 day

    One named owner each for data, configuration, integrations, and agent enablement, plus a decision-maker who can call a rollback. Put the go/no-go meeting in calendars now, 48 hours before the freeze.

  6. Identify dead data

    Drop test records, spam contacts, cases older than your retention policy, and orphaned records with no associations. Enterprise Salesforce instances carry years of custom objects, workflows, and validation rules. Undocumented complexity routinely doubles migration timelines.

  7. Define scope

    Decide which objects migrate, which are archived, and which are dropped. Document the decision. Determine a cutoff date — are you migrating 10 years of closed cases, or just the last 2 years? A common pattern: migrate 2 years of active/recent data, archive the rest to CSV/warehouse.

  8. Map users and agents

    Create all HubSpot owners before importing records. Build a Salesforce User ID → HubSpot Owner ID mapping table. You cannot assign a Ticket to an agent in HubSpot if that agent does not exist yet.

Salesforce Service Cloud → HubSpot Service Hub specifics

Big bang
All data migrates in a single cutover window. Simpler but higher risk. Typical window: 24–72 hours for mid-market, up to a week for enterprise.
Phased big-bang
Migrate historical closed data first (Phase 1), then migrate all active cases and open tickets over a weekend and cut over routing rules (Phase 2). Takes the bulk of data volume out of the critical path.
Incremental
Migrate historical data first, then delta-sync new records until cutover. Best for organizations that cannot afford any downtime.
Risk mitigation
Take a full Salesforce backup (Data Export Service or Bulk API extract), document rollback procedures, and define success criteria before starting.

Don't move on until

  • Record counts confirmed for tickets, contacts, organisations and macros
  • Success criteria signed off by the support lead
  • Freeze window provisionally booked with the business
02 Data Audit Find out what is actually in the data before you try to move it. 0/7

Objective A profiled, cleaned export with every quality defect either fixed at source or explicitly accepted.

  1. Take a full Salesforce Service Cloud export and profile it

    Data engineer 1-2 days

    Export to CSV or JSON and profile every file: row counts, null rates per column, distinct values, and type consistency. Compare row counts against the API totals from Discovery — a gap here means your export is silently truncated, usually by pagination.

    Data Profiler Profile the Salesforce Service Cloud export for nulls, outliers and type drift
  2. Validate file structure before anyone writes a transform

    Data engineer 1 day

    Check delimiters, quoting, encoding (expect UTF-8, watch for BOMs and Latin-1), duplicate headers, and embedded newlines in ticket bodies. Ticket descriptions with raw newlines and commas break naive CSV parsers and silently shift columns.

    A single unescaped quote in one ticket body can shift every subsequent column without any error.

    CSV Validator Catch broken headers and ragged rows in the raw export
  3. Inventory PII and set retention

    Compliance / DPO 2 days

    Scan for emails, phone numbers, payment card fragments, national IDs and anything else regulated in ticket bodies and custom fields — support tickets are where customers paste things they should not. Decide what gets migrated, masked, or dropped, and record the legal basis.

    Ticket bodies and attachments routinely contain card and ID data that never appears in a structured field.

    PII & Compliance Scanner Find regulated fields before they land in a new system
  4. Quantify duplicates, orphans and dead references

    Support ops 1-2 days

    Count duplicate contacts (same email, different casing), tickets whose requester no longer exists, organisations with no members, and attachments whose parent ticket is gone. Fix these in Salesforce Service Cloud where you can — migrating them just moves the mess.

    Data Cleaner Strip empty rows, stray whitespace and dead columns
  5. Clean and normalise the export

    Data engineer 2 days

    Trim whitespace, drop empty rows and columns, normalise casing on emails and tags, and standardise every timestamp to UTC ISO 8601. Timezone drift is invisible at load time and shows up weeks later as SLA reports nobody can reconcile.

  6. Produce a masked copy for sandbox work

    Data engineer 0.5 day

    Generate a realistic but fake version of the export for testing and for any vendor who needs sample data. Loading real customer PII into a sandbox is a breach in most jurisdictions, and sandboxes are rarely covered by your DPA.

    PII Masker Generate a safe copy for sandbox and vendor testing
  7. Audit Salesforce permissions

    Ensure your extraction user has "API Enabled," "View All Data," and "Manage Content" permissions. Without "View All Data," Bulk API 2.0 queries will silently return partial results based on the user's sharing rules.

Salesforce Service Cloud → HubSpot Service Hub specifics

Data audit
Inventory every Salesforce object in scope — Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Cases, Opportunities, Activities (Tasks/Events), EmailMessages, CaseComments, Attachments (ContentDocument/ContentVersion), Knowledge Articles, Entitlements, and all custom objects. Run SELECT COUNT() FROM [Object] for each to establish baseline record counts.
HTML cleanup
Strip unsupported HTML from email bodies and descriptions. HubSpot's rich text properties support a subset of HTML — <script>, <style>, and <iframe> tags will cause validation failures

Don't move on until

  • Export parses cleanly with no ragged rows or encoding errors
  • PII inventory complete and retention decisions recorded
  • Duplicate and orphan records quantified and triaged
03 Field Mapping Turn two schemas into one signed-off mapping spec. 0/6

Objective A reviewed field-level mapping covering every object, with an explicit decision for every field that has no target.

  1. Generate the first-pass Salesforce Service Cloud → HubSpot Service Hub field map

    Solution architect 2 days

    Start from an automated match on both schemas, then review every row by hand. Automated matching gets the obvious 70% right and is confidently wrong on the rest — especially anything named "type", "status" or "custom_field_1".

    Schema Mapper Opens pre-loaded with the Salesforce Service Cloud → HubSpot Service Hub field pair
  2. Map status, priority and channel values, not just field names

    Support lead 1-2 days

    Enumerate every value in each picklist on both sides and map them explicitly. Value-level mismatches are the defect class that survives all the way to production because the field itself mapped fine — a ticket that should be "Pending" arriving as "Open" reopens SLA clocks.

    Statuses with no target equivalent (on-hold, pending-customer) need a policy decision, not a best guess.

  3. Decide how custom fields land

    Solution architect 2 days

    Create the target custom fields first, matching type exactly (a dropdown mapped to free text can never be mapped back). Where HubSpot Service Hub has no equivalent, decide between a new custom field, a tag, or a note appended to the ticket body — and record which.

  4. Resolve identity and threading

    Data engineer 1 day

    Decide how source IDs are preserved — most platforms will not let you set the primary key, so keep the original ID in a custom field. Without it, reconciliation becomes fuzzy matching and every future support question about an old ticket is unanswerable.

    Losing the original ticket ID makes reconciliation and rollback effectively impossible.

  5. Plan attachments, inline images and threading order

    Data engineer 1-2 days

    Confirm size limits, allowed MIME types, and whether inline images survive as attachments or need rehosting. Decide the comment ordering and author attribution rules: comments loaded out of order, or all attributed to the API user, destroy the conversation history agents rely on.

  6. Freeze and sign off the mapping spec

    Project manager 1 day

    Version the spec, walk the support lead through it row by row, and get explicit sign-off. Any change after this point goes through change control — mid-flight mapping edits are how partial loads happen.

Salesforce Service Cloud → HubSpot Service Hub specifics

ID remapping
Replace Salesforce AccountId on Contact records with the HubSpot Company ID from your mapping table
Picklist translation
Convert Salesforce picklist values to HubSpot dropdown internal values (e.g., Salesforce "Escalated" → HubSpot pipeline stage ID "12345678")
Date formatting
Salesforce returns ISO 8601 (2024-01-15T10:30:00.000+0000); HubSpot accepts Unix millisecond timestamps for date properties (1705312200000)
Data type coercion
Salesforce multi-select picklists → HubSpot semicolon-delimited strings ("ValueA;ValueB;ValueC")
Multi-currency handling
If Salesforce has multi-currency enabled, convert CurrencyIsoCode fields to HubSpot's deal_currency_code. HubSpot multi-currency requires Enterprise and must be configured before import

Don't move on until

  • Every source field is mapped, deliberately dropped, or parked in a custom field
  • Status, priority and channel value maps agreed with the support lead
  • Mapping spec version-controlled and signed off
04 Test Migration Prove the pipeline on a small, representative slice. 0/6

Objective A pilot load into a HubSpot Service Hub sandbox that reconciles cleanly and has been reviewed by real agents.

  1. Stand up a HubSpot Service Hub sandbox that matches production config

    Solution architect 2-3 days

    Create the custom fields, groups, brands, business hours and SLA policies first. A pilot into a default sandbox tests nothing, because the failures you care about are all configuration mismatches.

  2. Pick a deliberately nasty pilot sample

    Data engineer 0.5 day

    Take 500-1000 records chosen for difficulty, not convenience: the longest ticket threads, tickets with the most attachments, non-Latin character sets, merged and split tickets, deleted requesters, and every status value. A clean random sample proves only that easy records are easy.

  3. Run the load with masked data and instrument everything

    Data engineer 1-2 days

    Log every API request and response with its source record ID. When 40 records fail out of 10,000 you need to know exactly which ones and why, without re-running the whole batch.

    PII Masker Never load real customer PII into a sandbox
  4. Measure real throughput against the rate limit

    Data engineer 1 day

    Record achieved records-per-hour under HubSpot Service Hub's actual rate limits, including retries and backoff. Extrapolate to the full volume: if the maths says the full load exceeds your freeze window, you fix that now, not on cutover night.

    Published rate limits are ceilings, not throughput. Assume real-world rates are meaningfully lower once retries and backoff are counted.

  5. Reconcile the pilot and triage every failure

    Data engineer 1-2 days

    Diff source against target on record counts and field-level values. Every discrepancy gets a root cause and a fix — "probably fine" at pilot scale becomes thousands of broken records at full scale.

    Migration Validation Tool Diff the pilot batch against source before scaling up
  6. Put real agents in front of the pilot data

    Support lead 2 days

    Have two or three agents work sample tickets end to end in the sandbox. They find the things reconciliation cannot see: unreadable threading, missing context, macros that no longer make sense. Fix the mapping, then re-run.

Don't move on until

  • Pilot batch reconciles to 100% on record counts
  • Agents have reviewed sample tickets and confirmed they are workable
  • Measured throughput extrapolates to a viable full-load window
05 Cutover Execute the switch inside a controlled, reversible window. 0/6

Objective All in-scope data live in HubSpot Service Hub, agents working in the new system, and a rollback path that stayed available throughout.

  1. Pre-load history before the freeze

    Data engineer 3-10 days

    Load closed tickets and contacts days or weeks ahead while Salesforce Service Cloud stays live. Only open tickets and the final delta need to move inside the freeze — this is the single biggest lever on window length.

    Helpdesk Migration Planner Size the freeze window from HubSpot Service Hub's real API limits
  2. Publish the runbook with times, owners and abort criteria

    Project manager 1 day

    A timed sequence: freeze start, final export, delta load, channel switch, smoke test, go/no-go, agent switch. Name who does each step and the explicit condition that triggers a rollback. Decide the abort criteria before the night, when nobody wants to be the one to call it.

  3. Freeze Salesforce Service Cloud and take the final delta

    Support ops 2-4 hours

    Stop new ticket creation, let agents finish in-flight replies, then export everything changed since the pre-load. Announce the freeze to the whole business, not just support — someone always tries to raise a ticket during it.

    Tickets created during an unenforced freeze land in the old system and are the most common source of permanently lost data.

  4. Load the delta and open tickets

    Data engineer 2-6 hours

    Run the delta load, then reconcile counts before touching any channel. Do not repoint email until the delta has verified — an inbound ticket arriving mid-load is far harder to untangle than a few extra minutes of freeze.

    Migration Validation Tool Confirm the final delta landed before you reopen
  5. Repoint channels and verify with live traffic

    IT / integrations 2-4 hours

    Switch email forwarding and MX or connector settings, update chat widgets and web forms, and re-authorise integrations. Then send real test tickets through every channel and confirm each lands, routes and triggers the right automation.

    Email forwarding changes can take up to a full DNS TTL to propagate — check the TTL days in advance and lower it if needed.

    Cron Expression Builder Schedule the delta syncs that run through the freeze
  6. Run the go/no-go and switch the agents

    Project sponsor 1-2 hours

    Walk the exit criteria with the decision-maker, call it explicitly, then move agents over with a named person on hand for the first few hours. Keep Salesforce Service Cloud read-only rather than cancelled — cancelling the old contract on day one removes your only fallback.

Don't move on until

  • Full historical load complete and counts matched
  • Inbound channels repointed and verified with live test tickets
  • Rollback decision point passed explicitly, not by default
06 Validation Prove the migration is complete, then close it out. 0/9

Objective Documented evidence that data, workflow and reporting all survived, and a signed acceptance.

  1. Run the full reconciliation

    Data engineer 1-2 days

    Compare source and target on every object: total counts, counts by status, counts by group, attachment counts, and field-level spot checks on a random sample. Produce one report you can hand to an auditor.

    Migration Validation Tool Reconcile Salesforce Service Cloud and HubSpot Service Hub record-for-record
  2. Verify field completeness, not just record counts

    Data engineer 1 day

    Re-profile the loaded data and compare null rates per field against the source profile. Matching record counts with a field that silently arrived empty is the failure mode counts alone will never catch.

    Data Profiler Prove field completeness held up through the load
  3. Rebuild reporting and compare against baselines

    Support ops 2-3 days

    Recreate your core dashboards — volume, first response time, resolution time, CSAT — and compare to pre-migration figures for the same period. Explain every variance; a changed SLA calculation is a real finding, not a rounding error.

    SLA and first-response metrics are usually recalculated from the loaded timestamps, so they will differ if any timestamp mapping was approximate.

  4. Test the workflow layer end to end

    Support ops 2 days

    Fire every trigger, automation, SLA escalation, macro and notification with a live ticket. Workflow does not migrate — it gets rebuilt — so it is untested until someone has actually watched it run.

  5. Confirm compliance and produce the audit trail

    Compliance / DPO 1 day

    Re-scan the loaded data for regulated fields, confirm retention and deletion policies are configured in HubSpot Service Hub, and file the evidence with your PII decisions from the audit phase.

    PII & Compliance Scanner Produce the compliance evidence your auditor will ask for
  6. Sign off, then decommission on a schedule

    Project sponsor 1 day

    Get written acceptance against the Discovery success criteria. Keep Salesforce Service Cloud read-only for an agreed period (30-90 days is typical), take a final archive export, and only then cancel. Diarise the decommission date so it does not quietly renew.

  7. Rebuild automations

    Salesforce Workflow Rules, Process Builder flows, and Flow automations do not export. Audit every automation in Salesforce (Setup → Flows, Setup → Process Builder, Setup → Workflow Rules), document the trigger conditions, criteria, and actions, and rebuild each in HubSpot Workflows. Common translations: Salesforce Process Builder → HubSpot Workflow; Salesforce Assignment Rules → HubSpot round-robin + conditional routing; Salesforce Escalation Rules → HubSpot SLA + Workflow escalation.

  8. Rebuild reports and dashboards

    Salesforce reports don't transfer. Recreate your key dashboards in HubSpot's reporting tools. HubSpot's custom report builder supports cross-object reporting on Professional+.

  9. Configure SLAs

    Set up HubSpot SLA goals in the help desk. Understand the limitations: 3 priority-based policies maximum, no milestone-level tracking, SLAs only apply to Conversations-connected tickets.

Salesforce Service Cloud → HubSpot Service Hub specifics

Reconfigure Email-to-Ticket
Reroute your support email addresses (e.g., support@company.com) from Salesforce Email-to-Case to HubSpot's Conversations Inbox. Update MX records or email forwarding rules. Test round-trip: send a test email → verify ticket creation → verify agent can reply from HubSpot.
Train agents
HubSpot's timeline-based UI is fundamentally different from Salesforce's tab-based interface. Budget 1–2 weeks for agent training on the help desk workspace, ticket queues, knowledge base, and Conversations inbox. Create a cheat sheet mapping Salesforce actions to HubSpot equivalents.

Don't move on until

  • Full reconciliation report attached to the project record
  • Reporting baselines match pre-migration figures within agreed tolerance
  • Formal acceptance signed and archive retention scheduled

Field mapping reference

The field-by-field mapping for each object. Use this as the starting point for your mapping spec.

Salesforce Service Cloud HubSpot Service Hub 13 fields
Salesforce Service Cloud fieldHubSpot Service Hub fieldNotes
Account Company 1:1 mapping. HubSpot uses domain-based deduplication.
Contact Contact Direct map. Salesforce allows one Account per Contact; HubSpot allows multiple Company associations.
Lead Contact (with Lifecycle Stage) HubSpot has no separate Lead object. Map Leads to Contacts and set lifecyclestage = lead.
Case Ticket Primary service object. Map Case Status → Ticket Pipeline Stage. Map RecordTypeId → Pipeline.
Opportunity Deal Map Stage → Deal Pipeline Stage.
EmailMessage Email Engagement Case emails become email engagements associated to the ticket. Threading via ThreadIdentifier must be handled explicitly (see Edge Cases).
CaseComment Note Engagement CaseComments become notes on the ticket timeline. Preserve CreatedById and CreatedDate in the note body.
Task / Event Task / Meeting Direct map to HubSpot activity types.
Knowledge Article (KnowledgeArticleVersion) Knowledge Base Article Requires re-creation; no bulk import API for KB articles.
Entitlement / Milestone No equivalent Must be rebuilt as custom properties, stored in an external system, or dropped.
Asset Custom Object (Enterprise only) Requires HubSpot Enterprise.
Service Contract No equivalent Flatten into custom properties on Company or create a custom object.
Custom Objects Custom Objects (Enterprise only) HubSpot custom objects are available on Enterprise plans only. An Enterprise subscription allows up to 10 custom object definitions with up to 500,000 records each without additional charges.

Risk matrix

Per-object risk for this pair. Plan extra validation around anything marked high.

ObjectRiskNotes
Contacts low Contacts map directly between platforms, though Salesforce's single-Account-per-Contact model differs from HubSpot's multi-Company association capability.
Companies (Accounts) low Accounts map 1:1 to Companies, but HubSpot uses domain-based deduplication which may merge records that were separate in Salesforce.
Tickets (Cases) medium Cases map to Tickets but require translating Case Status to Pipeline Stage and RecordTypeId to Pipeline, with careful handling of picklist values that may silently convert to text strings.
Email Messages high Salesforce EmailMessages must be converted to HubSpot email engagements with explicit thread reconstruction, and cannot be migrated via CSV import.
Case Comments medium CaseComments become Note engagements on the ticket timeline, but original CreatedById and CreatedDate metadata must be manually preserved in the note body since HubSpot cannot backdate engagement authors.
Custom Fields medium Picklist values are not validated during HubSpot import and unmapped values silently become text strings, requiring pre-migration field mapping and property creation in HubSpot.
Custom Objects high Custom objects are only available on HubSpot Enterprise plans (limited to 10 definitions and 500K records each), making them inaccessible for Professional-tier migrations.
Entitlements and Milestones high These Salesforce objects have no HubSpot equivalent whatsoever and must be rebuilt as custom properties, tracked externally, or abandoned entirely.
Knowledge Base Articles high HubSpot has no bulk import API for Knowledge Base articles, requiring manual re-creation of each article in the HubSpot knowledge base editor.
Attachments and Files medium File attachments require separate handling via HubSpot's file upload API and cannot be included in CSV imports, adding complexity and requiring Salesforce ContentDocument/ContentVersion access permissions.

The hard parts

What makes this specific migration difficult, beyond the mechanics.

Non-Equivalent Data Model Mapping

Salesforce Cases, CaseComments, EmailMessages, and Entitlements do not map 1:1 to HubSpot Tickets and Engagements, requiring custom transformation logic for each object type.

Multi-Object Relationship Preservation

CSV imports support only two-object associations per file, so preserving multi-level relationships (Account → Contact → Case → EmailMessage) requires API-based migration with a separate associations pass.

Custom Objects Require Enterprise

HubSpot restricts custom objects to Enterprise plans only, meaning Salesforce orgs with custom objects targeting HubSpot Professional have no destination for those records.

HubSpot API Rate Limits

HubSpot batch endpoints accept only 100 records per call with 100 requests per 10 seconds, making large migrations (500K+ tickets with engagements) a multi-day continuous throughput operation.

No Equivalent for SLA Objects

Salesforce Entitlements, Milestones, and Service Contracts have no HubSpot counterpart, requiring teams to either flatten data into custom properties, store it externally, or drop it entirely.

Email Threading and Engagement History

Salesforce EmailMessages must be converted to HubSpot email engagements with explicit ThreadIdentifier handling, and engagement history (calls, meetings, emails) cannot be imported via CSV at all.

Tools used in this playbook

All free, all run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.

Helpdesk Evaluator Sanity-check that HubSpot Service Hub is the right target before you commit COI & ROI Calculator Build the 36-month business case you will need for sign-off Helpdesk Migration Planner Turn ticket volume into a dated Salesforce Service Cloud → HubSpot Service Hub timeline Data Profiler Get real record counts instead of estimating from memory PII & Compliance Scanner Find regulated fields before they land in a new system CSV Validator Catch broken headers and ragged rows in the raw export Data Cleaner Strip empty rows, stray whitespace and dead columns PII Masker Generate a safe copy for sandbox and vendor testing Regex Tester with Migration Patterns Prototype the extraction patterns before scripting them Schema Mapper Opens pre-loaded with the Salesforce Service Cloud → HubSpot Service Hub field pair Data Format Converter Reshape the export into the format HubSpot Service Hub's importer expects CSV to JSON Converter Turn flat exports into the JSON the API expects JSON to CSV Converter Flatten nested API responses into a reviewable sheet XML to JSON Converter Convert legacy XML payloads for a JSON-first importer CSV to SQL Converter Load the export into a staging table you can query Migration Validation Tool Diff the pilot batch against source before scaling up JWT Decoder Inspect the token when the API rejects your calls Base64 Decoder Decode attachment payloads to confirm they survived transit Cron Expression Builder Schedule the delta syncs that run through the freeze

FAQ

Can I use the native HubSpot-Salesforce connector to migrate historical data?

No. The native connector is a sync tool, not a migration engine. It supports up to 10 custom objects (Enterprise only), cannot migrate attachments or full engagement history, and does not backfill historical cases — records only sync when created or updated after the integration is enabled. Use the Salesforce Bulk API and HubSpot CRM API for one-time migration.

How long does a Salesforce Service Cloud to HubSpot Service Hub migration take?

Small orgs (under 50K records, no custom objects) can complete a CSV-based migration in 1–3 days. Mid-market orgs (50K–500K records) typically need 2–4 weeks with API-based migration. Enterprise orgs with custom objects, attachments, and complex relationships should plan for 4–8 weeks.

Do I need HubSpot Enterprise to migrate Salesforce custom objects?

Yes. HubSpot custom objects are gated to the Enterprise tier across all Hubs. Enterprise allows up to 10 custom object definitions with 500,000 records each. If your Salesforce org has more than 10 custom objects, you'll need to consolidate, flatten into custom properties, or drop some during migration.

What Salesforce Service Cloud data cannot be migrated to HubSpot?

Entitlements, Milestones, Service Contracts, and Assets have no native HubSpot equivalent. Salesforce Workflows, Process Builder flows, and validation rules cannot be exported — they must be rebuilt manually in HubSpot. Multi-touch attribution data from Salesforce Campaigns also does not transfer without custom mapping.

What are the HubSpot API rate limits for migration?

HubSpot Professional allows up to 650,000 requests/day with a 190 requests/10-second burst limit. Enterprise allows 1,000,000 requests/day with the same burst limit. The Search API has a separate 4 requests/second limit. Use batch endpoints (100 records per call) to maximize throughput.

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