Zendesk-to-HubSpot migrations hit strict API limits on both sides, and structural mismatches in side conversations, macros, and associations require careful engineering — not a drag-and-drop tool.
There is no native migration path from Zendesk to HubSpot Service Hub. The existing Zendesk-HubSpot integration is one-way, pushing ticket events to HubSpot's contact timeline without creating actual HubSpot tickets or syncing custom fields. The two platforms differ fundamentally: Zendesk is a ticket-centric support system while HubSpot uses a graph-based CRM where tickets, contacts, and companies must be explicitly associated via the Associations v4 API. A successful migration requires custom engineering work to handle dual rate-limiting regimes, structural mismatches (side conversations, tags, CSAT ratings have no native HubSpot equivalents), pipeline/stage translation, and multi-step API orchestration for attachments, notes, and associations.
Read this first
Pair-specific gotchas that catch teams out. Each one has cost somebody a weekend.
Who this guide is for
RevOps managers and Heads of Support consolidating their tech stack into HubSpot Service Hub. If you are running a two-way sync between Zendesk and HubSpot rather than a full migration, the API constraints in this guide still apply to data extraction.
Silent failure mode
Creating tickets before contacts exist results in association calls that reference non-existent IDs. HubSpot will not throw an error in all cases. You end up with tickets that appear successfully imported but have no customer context — orphaned records that render your CRM history useless.
Store Zendesk source IDs in custom HubSpot properties
user ID, organization ID, ticket ID, comment ID, attachment ID, and side conversation ID. Even when email or domain is your operational dedup key, source IDs give you a reliable join key for reruns, delta sync, and post-migration QA.
Critical trap
On the Zendesk Ticket Comments API, include_inline_images defaults to false. Inline images are not returned in the attachments list unless you explicitly request them. If your migration logic only counts attachments, you will under-migrate the visual history agents rely on. (developer.zendesk.com)
HubSpot's Knowledge Base import tool has a hard limit of 400 articles per import
If your Zendesk Guide has more than 400 articles, you must split the import into batches. When using Smart copy, importing from a homepage URL is only available for newly created or migrated knowledge bases. (knowledge.hubspot.com)
The CSV import method offers the same field set and carries the same metadata limitations
It gives you more control over the HTML body content but does not solve the table or metadata problems. One gotcha: Keywords must be comma-separated without spaces after the comma, or the import can fail on those tags. (knowledge.hubspot.com)
Use the native importer for a pilot, not as your final decision
Pick 10–20 representative Zendesk articles: one with images, one with tables, one with multi-language content, one with reusable content blocks, and one high-traffic SEO page. If the pilot results are clean, the native tool may be sufficient for your use case.
If you are building a custom script and hitting 401 errors on HubSpot's Knowledge Base
If you are building a custom script and hitting 401 errors on HubSpot's Knowledge Base API, switch from a Private App token to an OAuth flow through a Public App. This is not well-documented but is consistently reported in developer communities. Run this auth spike in week one of your migration project, not the night before cutover.
Don't forget images inside <a> tags (clickable screenshots), source [srcset] elements,
Don't forget images inside <a> tags (clickable screenshots), source [srcset] elements, and CSS background-image properties in styled divs. A regex-only approach will miss these. Use an HTML parser like BeautifulSoup or cheerio.
Do not decommission Zendesk until your crawler finds zero Zendesk-hosted image URLs in
Do not decommission Zendesk until your crawler finds zero Zendesk-hosted image URLs in the imported HubSpot article bodies.
Zendesk's Redirect Rules API reserves the /knowledge/ path — it is used for Knowledge admin
This is the exact default path HubSpot uses for its Knowledge Base URLs. If you are trying to set up redirects within Zendesk that point to HubSpot URLs starting with /knowledge/, those redirect rules will not work. Handle the redirect at the DNS or CDN layer instead, or configure HubSpot to use a different Knowledge Base URL path.
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.
Objective A written scope with agreed success criteria, a named owner per workstream, and a budget approved by finance.
Keep these open
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Pull the real numbers out of Zendesk
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 -
Decide what history actually moves
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 -
Confirm HubSpot can hold your support model
Walk your current workflow through HubSpot: 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.
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Build the business case
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 Zendesk → HubSpot timeline -
Name owners and set the go/no-go date
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.
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.
Objective A profiled, cleaned export with every quality defect either fixed at source or explicitly accepted.
Keep these open
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Take a full Zendesk export and profile it
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 Zendesk export for nulls, outliers and type drift -
Validate file structure before anyone writes a transform
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 -
Inventory PII and set retention
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 -
Quantify duplicates, orphans and dead references
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 Zendesk where you can — migrating them just moves the mess.
Data Cleaner Strip empty rows, stray whitespace and dead columns -
Clean and normalise the export
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.
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Produce a masked copy for sandbox work
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
Zendesk → HubSpot specifics
- What works
- You get standard properties (Ticket Name, Pipeline, Stage, Create Date) and custom properties in a single flat file.
- What fails
- A CSV export cannot preserve relationships. It will not include the chronological thread of emails, live chats, or internal notes attached to the ticket. If you need a HubSpot Service Hub export conversations extract (the actual back-and-forth dialogue), the native CSV export will leave you empty-handed.
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.
Objective A reviewed field-level mapping covering every object, with an explicit decision for every field that has no target.
Keep these open
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Generate the first-pass Zendesk → HubSpot field map
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 Zendesk → HubSpot field pair -
Map status, priority and channel values, not just field names
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.
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Decide how custom fields land
Create the target custom fields first, matching type exactly (a dropdown mapped to free text can never be mapped back). Where HubSpot has no equivalent, decide between a new custom field, a tag, or a note appended to the ticket body — and record which.
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Resolve identity and threading
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.
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Plan attachments, inline images and threading order
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.
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Freeze and sign off the mapping spec
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.
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.
Objective A pilot load into a HubSpot sandbox that reconciles cleanly and has been reviewed by real agents.
Keep these open
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Stand up a HubSpot sandbox that matches production config
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.
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Pick a deliberately nasty pilot sample
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.
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Run the load with masked data and instrument everything
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 -
Measure real throughput against the rate limit
Record achieved records-per-hour under HubSpot'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.
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Reconcile the pilot and triage every failure
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 -
Put real agents in front of the pilot data
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.
Objective All in-scope data live in HubSpot, agents working in the new system, and a rollback path that stayed available throughout.
Keep these open
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Pre-load history before the freeze
Load closed tickets and contacts days or weeks ahead while Zendesk 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's real API limits -
Publish the runbook with times, owners and abort criteria
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.
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Freeze Zendesk and take the final delta
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.
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Load the delta and open tickets
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 -
Repoint channels and verify with live traffic
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 -
Run the go/no-go and switch the agents
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 Zendesk 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.
Objective Documented evidence that data, workflow and reporting all survived, and a signed acceptance.
Keep these open
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Run the full reconciliation
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 Zendesk and HubSpot record-for-record -
Verify field completeness, not just record counts
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 -
Rebuild reporting and compare against baselines
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.
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Test the workflow layer end to end
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.
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Confirm compliance and produce the audit trail
Re-scan the loaded data for regulated fields, confirm retention and deletion policies are configured in HubSpot, and file the evidence with your PII decisions from the audit phase.
PII & Compliance Scanner Produce the compliance evidence your auditor will ask for -
Sign off, then decommission on a schedule
Get written acceptance against the Discovery success criteria. Keep Zendesk 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.
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.
Object Object
| Zendesk field | HubSpot field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ticket | Ticket | Map subject → subject, description → content |
| User (end-user) | Contact | Match on email; create if new |
| User (agent) | Owner | Map Zendesk agent to HubSpot owner by email |
| Organization | Company | Match on domain or name |
| Ticket Comment (public) | Note or Email activity | Associate to ticket via Notes API |
| Ticket Comment (private/internal) | Note (private) | Use Notes API; no native "internal note" on ticket thread |
| Side Conversation | Note (private) | No 1:1 equivalent — see below |
| Tag | Multi-select property | HubSpot has no native tag object |
| Custom Field (dropdown) | Custom property (dropdown) | Dropdown values must be pre-created in HubSpot |
| Custom Field (text) | Custom property (single-line/multi-line) | Respect 65,536-character limit |
| Ticket Priority | hs_ticket_priority | Zendesk uses Low/Normal/High/Urgent; HubSpot uses Low/Medium/High |
| Ticket Status | Pipeline Stage | Must map to a pre-configured pipeline |
| Group | Team | HubSpot teams are separate from owners |
| Satisfaction Rating | Custom property | No native CSAT-on-ticket field in HubSpot |
| Attachment | File (via File Manager) | Upload, then link URL in note body via hs_attachment_ids |
Guide Knowledge Base
| Zendesk field | HubSpot field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Category | 1:1 mapping. HubSpot supports up to 1,000 categories per KB. |
| Section | Subcategory | Sections can nest up to 5 levels deep on Enterprise plans; HubSpot subcategories are flat (one level only). |
| Article | Article | Body is HTML in both systems. |
| Article Translations | Separate articles per language | HubSpot supports multi-language KBs on Professional and Enterprise, but each language variant is managed separately. |
| Labels | Tags / Keywords | Zendesk labels map to HubSpot keywords. Clean delimiter formatting before import — keywords with a space after the comma can throw import errors. |
| User Segments / Permission Groups | Knowledge Base access rules | Visibility model differs — requires manual re-configuration. |
| Article Attachments | File Manager uploads | No automatic migration path for block-level attachments. |
| Vote count | Not importable | No API or import field exists for article votes in HubSpot. |
Risk matrix
Per-object risk for this pair. Plan extra validation around anything marked high.
| Object | Risk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets | medium | Core ticket fields like subject and description map directly, but status-to-pipeline-stage translation and priority value differences (Zendesk uses Normal/Urgent vs. HubSpot's Medium) require careful pre-configuration to avoid data mismatches. |
| Contacts | low | Zendesk end-users map cleanly to HubSpot contacts with email as the match key, and bulk CSV import via the Imports API supports up to 80 million rows per day. |
| Companies | low | Zendesk organizations map to HubSpot companies matched on domain or name, with straightforward field alignment. |
| Ticket Comments | medium | Public and private comments must be recreated as notes or email activities via the Notes API and individually associated to tickets, with no native internal note distinction on the HubSpot ticket thread. |
| Side Conversations | high | There is no one-to-one equivalent in HubSpot; side conversations must be flattened into private notes, resulting in permanent loss of threaded structure and participant context. |
| Attachments | high | Each attachment requires a separate Zendesk download call, HubSpot File Manager upload, and note-level linking, dramatically multiplying API calls and introducing failure points at each step. |
| Custom Fields | medium | Dropdown custom fields require all option values to be pre-created in HubSpot before import, and text fields must respect the 65,536-character limit to avoid silent truncation. |
| Tags | medium | HubSpot has no native tag object, so Zendesk tags must be mapped to a custom multi-select property with all values pre-defined, risking data loss if tag cardinality is high. |
| CSAT / Satisfaction Ratings | high | HubSpot has no native CSAT-on-ticket field, requiring creation of a custom property and manual mapping of Zendesk's satisfaction rating data with no guarantee of preserving survey response metadata. |
| Ticket-Contact-Company Associations | high | Associations must be explicitly created via the Associations v4 API with correct type IDs in strict dependency order; incorrect type IDs silently fail to display in the UI, and referencing non-existent records may not always throw errors. |
The hard parts
What makes this specific migration difficult, beyond the mechanics.
Dual API Rate Limiting
Zendesk's Incremental Export API caps at 10 requests per minute while HubSpot enforces a shared token-bucket limit of 190 requests per 10 seconds across all account activity, creating a compounding throughput bottleneck for large migrations.
Explicit Association Orchestration
HubSpot's graph-based CRM requires tickets to be explicitly associated with contacts and companies via the Associations v4 API using correct associationTypeId values, and records must be created in strict dependency order to avoid orphaned or silently unlinked tickets.
Side Conversation Data Loss
Zendesk side conversations have no native equivalent in HubSpot and must be flattened into private notes, losing their threaded structure, participant metadata, and channel-specific context.
Ticket Status to Pipeline Mapping
Zendesk ticket statuses must be translated into pre-configured HubSpot pipeline stages, requiring upfront pipeline design and explicit mapping since the two systems model ticket lifecycle progression differently.
Attachment Migration Complexity
Each Zendesk attachment requires a separate download API call, upload to HubSpot's File Manager, and linking via hs_attachment_ids in the associated note body, multiplying the required API calls per ticket significantly.
Structural Field Mismatches
Zendesk tags, satisfaction ratings, and priority levels have no direct HubSpot equivalents and must be mapped to custom multi-select properties, custom properties, and the hs_ticket_priority field respectively, with value translation required for priority levels.
What breaks
Known failure modes. Have a recovery plan for each before you cut over.
Attachments and broken inline images:
Files attached to emails or notes are stored as IDs. You must query the Files API to download the actual binaries. Similarly, inline images in HubSpot emails are hosted on HubSpot's CDN and will break if not downloaded and re-hosted.
Associations:
HubSpot stores relationships separately from the ticket object. You must query the Associations API to map a ticket back to its contact or company.
Ordering:
Engagements (emails, notes, meetings) are returned based on their creation or modification date, not necessarily the order they appear in the UI thread.
Tools used in this playbook
All free, all run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
FAQ
Does HubSpot have a native Zendesk migration tool?
Yes. HubSpot Smart Transfer maps Zendesk Users to Contacts, Organizations to Companies, and Tickets to Tickets. Attachments, ticket comments as notes, and ticket conversations are handled as one-time post-sync transfers, not live-synced data. HubSpot also supports reverting a transfer. It works well for standard structures with moderate history, but does not handle custom field transformations, inline image rewriting, or delta sync.
Can I migrate Zendesk ticket conversations into HubSpot's threaded view?
Not directly. HubSpot does not support importing historical conversation threads as first-class conversation objects. Zendesk ticket comments can be migrated as Notes associated with tickets via the Notes API, and they will appear on the ticket timeline, but not in HubSpot's Help Desk conversation view or the customer portal. Only new conversations started natively in HubSpot display in the threaded view.
What are the Zendesk and HubSpot API rate limits for migration?
Zendesk's Incremental Export API allows 10 requests per minute (30 with the High Volume add-on). HubSpot allows 190 requests per 10 seconds for private apps on Professional/Enterprise plans (110 for public OAuth apps), with daily limits of 650K–1M calls. The HubSpot Imports API supports up to 80 million rows per day for bulk loading. Both platforms return 429 errors when limits are exceeded.
Can Zendesk macros and automations be imported into HubSpot?
No. HubSpot's Zendesk transfer does not include macros, triggers, or automations. Each macro must be manually decomposed: canned reply text becomes a HubSpot Snippet, Template, or help desk macro; field updates become Workflow actions; and tag applications become updates to multi-select custom properties. HubSpot now supports help desk macros tied to ticket-based workflows, with a limit of 50 per account.
How long does a Zendesk to HubSpot migration take?
It depends on volume and complexity. A small migration under 5,000 tickets with simple fields can be done in a day using CSV import or Smart Transfer. A large migration of 100,000+ tickets with attachments, side conversations, and zero-downtime requirements typically takes 3–5 days with custom scripts, including historical bulk load and delta sync.