Migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM: Sales Team Guide 2026

Migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM means exporting your contacts, companies, deals, and custom properties out of HubSpot, then importing them into Zoho CRM and rebuilding pipelines and automation. This guide completes the move in roughly 40 minutes and cuts CRM costs because Zoho CRM Professional sits far below HubSpot’s bundled Sales Hub pricing.

HubSpot’s pricing has pushed many growing sales teams to look for an alternative that delivers the same pipeline visibility and automation without the per-seat sticker shock. This guide walks you through how to migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM in roughly 40 minutes, from initial data export to verified imports and rebuilt automation. You will finish with a working CRM and a smaller monthly bill.

Why Migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM

The single biggest reason teams migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM is cost. Per HubSpot’s published Sales Hub pricing as of May 2026, Sales/Service Professional is $450/month annual on annual billing with core seats bundled. Sales/Service Enterprise is $1350/month annual before add-ons.

Zoho CRM Professional, the closest functional equivalent, is $23/month annual on annual billing per Zoho’s pricing page. For a 5-person team, Zoho’s per-user math remains far below HubSpot’s bundled Professional floor while keeping forecasting, custom modules, multi-currency, and inventory features in the box.

If you want artificial intelligence on par with HubSpot’s Breeze AI, Zoho CRM Enterprise at $40/month annual unlocks Zia AI. A 5-seat Enterprise plan still lands well below HubSpot Sales Hub Pro and Sales Hub Enterprise.

Zoho CRM dashboard for sales teams

A note on the Free tier. Zoho CRM does offer a free plan capped at 3 users with lead, account, and deal management, tasks, events, notes, mobile app access, basic reports, and email integration. It does not include workflow automation, custom modules, Zia AI, advanced reports, or multi-currency. Most teams migrating from HubSpot Sales Hub will outgrow Free in days because the workflow automations and custom fields they relied on simply are not available. Treat Free as a sandbox for evaluation, then move to Standard ($14/month annual) or Professional ($23/month annual) before you import production data. For a deeper pricing comparison see our Zoho CRM pricing tiers guide.

Honest tradeoffs - Zoho CRM. Skip Zoho CRM if your sales motion depends on HubSpot’s marketing-and-CRM combo (sequences, smart content, marketing email throttling) inside one platform. Zoho CRM’s UI is denser than HubSpot’s and the learning curve for non-technical reps is steeper for the first two weeks. Native integrations outside the Zoho stack are also fewer, which matters if your tech stack is Slack-Snowflake-Segment-heavy.

Honest tradeoffs - HubSpot. HubSpot is the wrong tool when budget per seat is the deciding constraint or when you only need the CRM half of the platform. The marketing-attached features you pay for sit unused and the per-seat math compounds quickly past 10 reps. Sales Hub Starter limits custom properties and reporting depth.

Pre-Migration Checklist

Before you touch either platform, take 15 minutes to inventory what lives inside HubSpot today. A clean inventory prevents broken automations and missing data on the other side.

Data inventory. List every object you store: contacts, companies, deals, tickets if you use Service Hub, custom objects, and any associated notes, calls, or emails. Note approximate record counts for each so you can verify totals after import. The HubSpot property management documentation shows how to find and group every property by object.

Custom properties audit. Open HubSpot Settings, then Properties, and export the full list for contacts, companies, and deals. Flag every custom property that holds business-critical data. Standard fields like email, phone, and lifecycle stage map cleanly to Zoho CRM defaults, but custom dropdowns, calculated properties, and date-only fields need explicit re-creation in Zoho.

Integrations to map. Document every active HubSpot integration. Common ones include Gmail or Outlook sync, Slack notifications, Zapier or Make scenarios, marketing tools like Mailchimp, and accounting connectors. For each, decide whether Zoho CRM has a native equivalent, whether you will rebuild the connection through Zoho Flow, or whether you will retire the integration. See our Zoho Flow no-code integration guide for build patterns.

Pipeline structure. Screenshot every deal pipeline and stage in HubSpot, including stage probabilities and any required fields. You will rebuild these manually in Zoho. Our Zoho CRM workflow automation guide covers stage-driven automation rebuilds.

User and team mapping. Note who owns which records and which HubSpot teams each user belongs to. Zoho CRM uses roles and profiles instead of teams, so plan how you will translate the structure. The official Zoho CRM users, roles, and profiles documentation details the full hierarchy model.

Honest tradeoffs - migration scope. Skip a full migration if HubSpot’s marketing automation, web tracking, or CMS hub is what your team actually uses day-to-day. Migrating only the CRM layer leaves you running both products and paying twice during transition. If you cannot point to at least three HubSpot features that you do not use, the savings will not justify the disruption.

How Do You Back Up Your HubSpot Data Before Migrating?

Even though Zoho CRM accepts CSV imports directly, take a full HubSpot export as your safety net. If anything looks wrong in Zoho, you can re-import from these files without re-running HubSpot exports later.

In HubSpot, follow the HubSpot export records documentation - go to Settings, then Account Setup, then Import and Export, and click Export. Run a separate export for each of the following:

All contacts with all properties
All companies with all properties
All deals with all properties, including the deal-to-contact and deal-to-company associations
Engagements (notes, calls, emails) if you want to preserve activity history
Custom objects, one CSV per object

HubSpot emails you a download link when each export is ready. Save the CSVs to a clearly labeled folder with a date stamp. For larger portals, exports can take 30 minutes or more, so kick these off first and continue with the rest of the setup while they run.

Open each CSV in a spreadsheet and confirm row counts match what HubSpot reports in the UI. Spot check 10 random records per file to confirm the data exported cleanly, especially for any rich-text fields, multi-select dropdowns, or date columns.

Set Up Zoho CRM Account

With backups in hand, head to zoho.com/crm and create your account. Use a shared admin email that more than one person on your team can access, not a personal address. Our Zoho CRM setup guide for small business covers initial configuration in detail.

Build your Zoho CRM workflow

Choose your edition. For most teams migrating from HubSpot Sales Hub Starter, Zoho CRM Standard at $14/month annual covers the basics: workflow automation, email templates, mass email, and inventory. If you came from Sales Hub Professional, jump to Zoho CRM Professional at $23/month annual to keep forecasting, custom modules, and multi-currency. If you relied on HubSpot’s Breeze AI for predictive lead scoring or content generation, choose Enterprise at $40/month annual to unlock Zia AI - see our Zoho CRM Zia AI features guide for the full Zia capability list.

Create users. Go to Setup, then Users and Control, then Users. Add each team member with the email address that matched their HubSpot login. Matching emails will let you map record ownership during import without manual reassignment.

Configure roles and profiles. Zoho separates permissions (Profiles) from data hierarchy (Roles). Build your role tree to mirror your reporting structure: CEO at the top, sales managers below, sales reps below them. Profiles control what each role can see and edit. The default Standard, Manager, and Administrator profiles handle most teams without customization.

Set your currency and time zone. Open Setup, then Company Details, and confirm both. If you sell in multiple currencies and you are on Professional or above, enable multi-currency now and add each currency you used in HubSpot.

Import Data into Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM’s Data Migration Wizard handles HubSpot imports natively, but a manual CSV import gives you more control over field mapping and is faster for typical small-team datasets. Imports complete in minutes for typical small-team datasets.

Connect data sources to Zoho CRM

Import order matters. Always import in this sequence to preserve relationships:

Companies (Accounts in Zoho)
Contacts
Deals
Notes and engagements

Importing contacts before companies means contacts will not auto-link to their parent account. Importing deals before contacts means deal-to-contact associations will fail.

Run the first import. From the top navigation, choose Accounts, then click the three-dot menu and select Import. Upload your HubSpot companies CSV. Zoho will preview the first few rows and ask you to map columns to Zoho fields. Standard fields like Account Name, Phone, and Website auto-detect per the Zoho field types reference. For custom fields, click Create Custom Field and choose the matching field type (single line, picklist, date, currency, and so on).

Set deduplication rules. Before you confirm, scroll to the deduplication section and choose Email or Account Name as the matching key, then select Skip if you are confident your CSV is clean, or Overwrite if you want Zoho to update existing records. Skip is safer for a first import.

Repeat for contacts and deals. Use Email as the dedup key for contacts and a custom HubSpot Deal ID field for deals. Drop the HubSpot Deal ID into a custom text field in Zoho so you can audit migrations later. Our Zoho CRM API developer guide covers programmatic post-migration auditing.

Migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM: Custom Properties and Pipelines

This is where most efforts to migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM fall apart, because custom properties and pipeline stages do not map cleanly between platforms. Spend extra time here and the rest of the migration goes smoothly.

Recreate custom fields. In Zoho, go to Setup, then Customization, then Modules and Fields. Open each module (Accounts, Contacts, Deals) and add every custom property from your HubSpot audit. Match field types exactly: HubSpot Single-line text becomes Zoho Single Line, HubSpot Dropdown select becomes Zoho Picklist, HubSpot Date picker becomes Zoho Date. For HubSpot Calculated properties, use Zoho’s Formula field type and rebuild the calculation manually.

Rebuild deal pipelines. Open Setup, then Customization, then Modules and Fields, then Deals. Click the Stages section and create a pipeline for each HubSpot pipeline you screenshotted earlier. Add each stage in order, set the probability percentage to match HubSpot, and mark required fields per stage. If you ran multiple pipelines in HubSpot for different sales motions, repeat for each.

Set up record ownership rules. In HubSpot, owner assignment was likely automated through workflows. In Zoho CRM, use Assignment Rules under Setup, then Automation, then Assignment Rules. Build a rule for each scenario: round-robin for inbound leads, territory-based for outbound, or rep-of-record for renewals.

Migrate sales sequences as workflows. HubSpot Sequences become Zoho CRM Workflows on Standard and above. Open Setup, then Automation, then Workflow Rules, and rebuild each sequence as a multi-step workflow with timed email tasks and reminders. This step is manual; there is no automated converter for HubSpot Sequences. The Zoho CRM workflow management documentation covers each action type in detail.

Honest tradeoffs - data fidelity. Free-text custom properties, calculated properties, and engagement-based scoring rules from HubSpot rarely round-trip cleanly. Plan to lose the historical engagement timeline (page views, email opens) - those events live inside HubSpot’s tracking pixel and do not export. If your sales reps reference HubSpot’s lifecycle scoring daily, recreate the score logic with Zoho’s Custom Functions before cutover, not after.

How Do You Verify Migration Integrity After Importing to Zoho CRM?

Before you cut your team over, verify the import succeeded at three levels: counts, content, and relationships.

Take breaks while running data verification

Record counts. In Zoho, open each module and check the total record count in the upper right. Compare against the row counts of your HubSpot CSVs. They should match within a margin of any duplicates Zoho merged. If counts are significantly off, review the import history under Setup, then Data Administration, then Import History, and check for skipped or failed rows.

Content spot checks. Pick 10 random records per module and open them side-by-side with the same record in HubSpot. Verify every populated field migrated, including custom fields and dropdown values. Pay special attention to multi-select picklists, which sometimes import as a single concatenated string and need cleanup.

Relationship integrity. Open 5 random Deals and confirm the linked Account and Contact records are correct. Open 5 random Contacts and confirm they roll up to the right Account. If associations are missing, you most likely imported in the wrong order; re-running the Deals or Contacts import with Update existing records and the right linking field usually fixes it.

Integration tests. If you connected Gmail or Outlook, send a test email from a contact record and confirm it logs in Zoho. Trigger a workflow manually to confirm automation runs as expected. Send a test webhook from any external system to confirm the new Zoho endpoint works. Our Zoho HubSpot integration guide covers two-way sync if you plan to keep both running during cutover.

HubSpot to Zoho CRM Feature Map

Use this map to translate HubSpot concepts to their Zoho CRM equivalents:

HubSpot Companies map to Zoho Accounts
HubSpot Deals map to Zoho Deals (same name, similar pipeline model)
HubSpot Sequences map to Zoho Workflows (Standard and above)
HubSpot Workflows map to Zoho Workflows with multi-step actions
HubSpot Lists map to Zoho Custom Views for static and dynamic segmentation
HubSpot Properties map to Zoho Fields (custom fields require Standard or above)
HubSpot Lifecycle Stage maps to Zoho Lead Status plus a custom Lifecycle Stage picklist
HubSpot Deal Stage Probability maps to Zoho Stage Probability in pipeline configuration
HubSpot Tickets map to Zoho Cases if you also use Zoho Desk, or to a custom module otherwise
HubSpot Forms map to Zoho Webforms under Setup, then Channels, then Webforms
HubSpot Reports map to Zoho Reports and Dashboards with broader chart options
HubSpot Breeze AI maps to Zoho Zia AI (Enterprise edition and above only)
HubSpot Teams map to Zoho Roles for hierarchy and Profiles for permissions
HubSpot Snippets map to Zoho Email Templates (Standard and above)
HubSpot Meetings maps to Zoho Bookings (separate Zoho product, integrates natively)

Most concepts have a 1-to-1 equivalent. The two areas that require the most rework are sequences (which become multi-step workflows) and lifecycle stage logic (which usually splits across two Zoho fields).

The Bottom Line: Migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM

Choosing to migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM is a one-day project for most small to mid-sized sales teams, and the savings start in week one. A 5-person team running HubSpot Sales Hub Professional can move to Zoho CRM Professional at $23/month annual per user, freeing budget you can redirect to ads, headcount, or tooling. The functional parity is closer than most HubSpot users expect, and the gaps that do exist (mostly around marketing automation depth) usually do not affect a sales-led migration. If you have done the pre-migration inventory and followed the import order in this guide, the result is a CRM your team can use on day one with no lost data.

For pricing flexibility beyond CRM, the bundled Zoho CRM pricing page lists every tier, and Zoho One at $37/month annual replaces a much larger SaaS stack at a comparable per-seat cost to Sales Hub Starter.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM?

For a small sales team with under 10,000 records, the time to migrate HubSpot to Zoho CRM is about 40 minutes of hands-on work plus background time for HubSpot exports to generate. Larger portals with hundreds of custom fields and complex automation can stretch to a full day. The bulk of the time goes into rebuilding workflows and pipelines, not the data import itself.

Can I run HubSpot and Zoho CRM in parallel during the migration?

Yes, and it is a good idea for the first week. Keep HubSpot read-only while your team learns Zoho, and use the Zoho HubSpot integration to sync any new activity until you are confident nothing is missing. After a week of verified parallel running, cancel your HubSpot subscription.

Will I lose my email history when migrating to Zoho CRM?

Email history that was logged through HubSpot’s email tracking does not automatically follow you to Zoho. Export engagements as a CSV and import them into Zoho’s Notes module to preserve the record, or connect Zoho’s Gmail or Outlook integration to start logging future emails immediately.

Does Zoho CRM include AI features like HubSpot’s Breeze AI?

Zoho CRM includes Zia AI starting on the Enterprise tier at $40/month annual. Zia covers predictive lead scoring, deal forecasting, anomaly detection, and conversational queries. The Free, Standard, and Professional tiers do not include Zia, so plan for Enterprise if AI is a must-have for your team.

What happens to my HubSpot integrations after I migrate?

You will need to rebuild each integration on the Zoho side. Most major SaaS tools (Slack, Mailchimp, Gmail, Outlook, QuickBooks, Xero) have native Zoho integrations that take minutes to configure. For anything custom, Zoho Flow handles the same kinds of automations as Zapier or Make, and Zoho’s REST API supports any integration you built directly against HubSpot.

External Resources

Zoho CRM data migration documentation - official import guide
HubSpot export records knowledge base - source-side export reference
Zoho CRM workflow management documentation - rebuild HubSpot Sequences as workflows