How to Migrate from HubSpot to Attio: The Complete Guide (2026)

Who This Guide Is For

If you've already decided to switch from HubSpot to Attio, or you're close to it, this is the guide you need.

There are plenty of comparison articles out there. This is not one of them. This is the practical guide for teams that have made the decision and want to get it done cleanly.

We're Attio Expert Partners. But before that, we used HubSpot as sales reps, built HubSpot implementation projects for clients, and set up automation workflows inside it for years. We know the platform well. We know where the data hides, what exports cleanly, and what you'll lose if you're not careful.

We've run this migration for multiple teams now. Most of them were on HubSpot Professional or Enterprise, frustrated with pricing, complexity, or the fact that they were paying for features they'd never touched. A couple were on the free tier and had outgrown the rigid schema before they'd properly started.

The pattern is usually the same: they spent too long in HubSpot because switching felt risky. Then they did the migration, and they wished they'd done it six months earlier.

Here's how to do it properly.

Before You Migrate: 3 Questions to Answer First

1. Are You Sure Attio Is the Right Choice?

This might sound like an odd thing to put in a migration guide. But we've had three conversations in the past year where we talked someone out of migrating, or told them to wait. Getting this wrong costs time, money, and goodwill from your team.

Attio is the right call if:

• You're a B2B company with 5-200 people on your sales team

• Your sales motion doesn't fit cleanly into HubSpot's Contacts-Companies-Deals model

• You're paying for HubSpot Professional or Enterprise and only using a fraction of it

• You want a modern, flexible data model you can shape around how you actually sell

• You're tired of HubSpot's pricing model punishing growth

Stay on HubSpot if:

• You rely heavily on HubSpot's marketing automation (email sequences, landing pages, forms, paid ads integration). Attio does not have a marketing suite. That's a genuine gap.

• You need 1,000+ native integrations. Attio's ecosystem is growing but it's not close to HubSpot's 1,500+.

• You have a large non-technical team who need a hand-held, opinionated CRM. Attio's flexibility requires more thought during setup.

If you tick the first list, carry on. If you're pausing on the second list, worth a conversation before you commit.

2. What Data Actually Matters?

Before you touch a single export, sit down and be honest about what you're actually using in HubSpot.

In almost every HubSpot workspace we've audited, the same thing is true: there are hundreds of custom properties, workflows, and contact records that nobody has looked at in months. One client we worked with had 2,270 companies in HubSpot. After audit, 920 of them were ghost records with zero meetings, no deals, and no list memberships. They were about to migrate all of them.

The data that matters:

• Contacts and companies with real engagement (meetings, calls, emails, open deals)

• Active deals and pipeline history

• Custom properties that are actually populated and used

• Email sequences that are currently running or planned

• Integrations that are live and connected

The data that usually does not matter:

• Contacts you haven't touched in 18+ months

• Custom properties that are empty on 95%+ of records

• Old deals from dead pipeline that pre-date your current sales motion

• Auto-enriched fields that HubSpot filled in but your team never reads

Clean list out beats bloated list in.

3. What Workflows Need Rebuilding?

Attio and HubSpot handle automation differently. Both have visual workflow builders, but the trigger types, action blocks, and conditional logic work in their own way. You can't export a HubSpot workflow and import it into Attio. Every automation needs to be rebuilt.

Before you migrate, list every active HubSpot workflow and categorise them:

Will rebuild in Attio:

• Deal stage routing and notifications

• Lead assignment logic

• Follow-up task creation on deals

• Slack alerts on key triggers (deal won, deal gone stale)

• Data enrichment triggers

• Field updates based on record changes

Will need a different approach:

• Marketing automation workflows (email nurtures, lead scoring from web behaviour, form-triggered sequences). Attio is a sales CRM, not a marketing platform. These workflows need to move to a dedicated marketing tool or be deprioritised.

• Complex multi-step conditional branching. Attio's workflow builder handles standard conditions well, but if you have deeply nested branching logic, you may need to simplify or split into multiple workflows.

Worth questioning before rebuilding:

• Workflows you built as workarounds for HubSpot's data model limitations. Some of these become unnecessary in Attio because the flexible data model solves the underlying problem differently.

• Workflows that nobody remembers creating. Every CRM accumulates automation debt. Migration is a good moment to clean house.

The goal isn't to replicate your HubSpot setup exactly. It's to rebuild the workflows that actually matter using the tools Attio gives you. Some will be simpler in Attio. Some will need a different approach. A few won't have an equivalent.

The Migration Process: Step by Step

Step 1: Audit Your Current HubSpot Setup

Do not skip this step to save time. It costs you twice as long on the other side.

Open HubSpot and go through each object (Contacts, Companies, Deals, any custom objects):

• Which custom properties are actually populated? Run a property report. If a field is empty on more than 80% of records, question whether it needs to come across.

• Which contacts have had real engagement? At minimum: an email reply, a meeting, or an open deal in the last 12 months.

• Which workflows are live? Turn off anything that is not actively running or planned.

• What integrations are connected? Audit your app marketplace list. Half of them are probably inactive.

• Where are your email sequences stored? Sequences in HubSpot do not migrate. You need to document these manually and rebuild them in Attio or your sequencing tool.

Produce a simple audit document. One section per object, one line per custom property with a keep/discard decision. This becomes your migration spec.

Step 2: Map Your Data Model

HubSpot and Attio think about data differently. This is the most important conceptual step.

HubSpot gives you: Contacts, Companies, Deals, Tickets (and custom objects on Enterprise).

Attio gives you: Objects (which you define), Lists (filterable views of records), and Attributes (which you define on each object).

The typical mapping looks like this:

• HubSpot Contacts -> Attio People object

• HubSpot Companies -> Attio Companies object

• HubSpot Deals -> Attio Deals object (or a custom pipeline object if your motion is more complex)

• HubSpot Lists -> Attio Lists (note: these are different. HubSpot lists are segmentation tools. Attio lists are more like pipeline stages or workflow queues.)

• HubSpot custom properties -> Attio custom attributes on the relevant object

The mapping exercise also forces a decision: where in HubSpot were you storing things as workarounds because the schema didn't fit? Custom properties crammed onto the wrong object, data duplicated across records because associations didn't support what you needed, picklist fields doing the job of a separate object. Attio's flexible data model means you can fix these properly during migration rather than carrying the same compromises into a new platform.

Write out your target Attio schema before you touch any imports.

Step 3: Clean Your Data Before Migrating

Do not migrate dirty data. This is the most common mistake and the hardest to fix after the fact.

Before you delete anything, export a full archive of your HubSpot data. Download complete CSVs of contacts, companies, and deals with all properties. Store them somewhere safe (Google Drive, Dropbox, wherever your team keeps backups). This is your safety net. If you realise six months later that you need something you removed, you can find it in the archive.

With that archived, go through the following in HubSpot before your migration export:

Identify ghost records. Contacts or companies with no activity in 18+ months, no deals, and no list memberships. These are candidates for removal, but use judgement. Some inactive records still have value. Contacts linked to closed-won deals are worth keeping for historical reporting and benchmarking, even if there's been no recent activity. The same applies to companies you've previously done business with. Archive or remove the ones that are clearly junk, but don't be aggressive with records tied to revenue history.

Fix person-as-company records. HubSpot sometimes creates company records from email signatures or form fills where the name is actually a person's name. These come across in the migration and pollute your company data. Audit companies with no website domain and a two or three word title-cased name. Most of them are people.

Standardise key fields. If you have "UK", "United Kingdom", "GB", and "Great Britain" all in your country field, standardise to one format before migrating. Same for industry, company size, deal stage names, and any field you plan to use for filtering or routing in Attio.

Remove test records. Any company or contact with "test", "demo", or a made-up email address. These always come across in bulk exports.

The cleanup is not glamorous. It takes a few hours. But what you bring across shapes how much your team trusts the new system from day one. A clean migration builds confidence. A messy one creates doubt before you've even started.

Step 4: Export From HubSpot

HubSpot's export function is solid. Here is what you need to know about what exports cleanly and what does not.

Exports cleanly:

• Contacts with all custom properties: CSV export from Contacts > Actions > Export

• Companies with all custom properties: same process

• Deals with custom properties: same

• Company-to-contact associations: include in the contacts export

• Deal-to-contact and deal-to-company associations: include in the deals export

Does not export cleanly:

• Email sequences and templates: these must be documented and rebuilt manually

• Workflow logic: there is no way to export HubSpot workflow configurations. Screenshot or document them.

• Call recordings: need to be downloaded individually or via the HubSpot API if you need them

• Email engagement history (opens, clicks per contact): you get the summary fields, not the raw engagement log

• Custom associations beyond the standard ones: document these separately

For each export, include all properties (not just the default ones). The default export is missing most of what you care about.

If you have a large data set (10,000+ records), use the HubSpot API rather than the UI exporter. The UI times out on large exports and sometimes silently truncates records.

Step 5: Design Your Attio Architecture

You have your data model mapping and your cleaned data. Now design the Attio workspace before importing anything.

This means:

• Create your custom attributes on each object. Match the field types correctly: HubSpot text fields become Attio text attributes, number fields become number attributes, select fields become select attributes (with the same option values).

• Set up your pipeline. Attio pipelines live on the Deals object (or your equivalent). Map your HubSpot deal stages to Attio stages. This is a good moment to simplify: most teams have too many deal stages.

• Create your lists. Think about what segmentation you need: active prospects, warm leads, current clients, churned accounts. These become lists in Attio.

• Set up your views. Attio views are saved filters on your objects. Build the ones your team uses daily before importing data, so the workspace looks right from day one.

• Set attribute visibility. Not every attribute needs to be visible on the main record page. Hide the ones that are rarely used. Attio workspaces get cluttered fast if you import 50 properties and don't curate what shows up.

The temptation is to rush to importing. Resist it. Twenty minutes of architecture work saves four hours of cleanup.

Step 6: Import Data Into Attio

With the workspace designed and your cleaned exports ready, you can start importing.

Import in this order:

1. Companies first (they have no dependencies)

2. People next, with company associations mapped

3. Deals last, with company and person associations

Attio's CSV importer handles most imports cleanly. A few things to watch:

• Association matching: Attio matches people to companies via email domain by default. For companies where your contacts use personal emails (Gmail, Outlook personal), you need to set the company name as the match key instead.

• Custom attributes: If you created your attributes in Step 5 with the exact same names as your HubSpot properties, the column headers in your CSV will map automatically. Small mismatches (capitalisation, spacing) will cause manual mapping work.

• Date fields: HubSpot's date format on export varies by account locale (MM/DD/YYYY for US, DD/MM/YYYY for UK, or sometimes Unix timestamps). Check what format your export uses and convert to ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) in a spreadsheet before importing into Attio to avoid mismatches.

• Phone numbers: International format (+44, +1) imports cleanly. Local format (07XXXXXXXXX) sometimes does not. Standardise phone numbers before importing.

Import a small test batch (100-200 records) first and check the output in Attio before running the full import. Spot-check five to ten records and verify that custom attributes, associations, and deal stages all came across correctly.

Step 7: Rebuild Automations Natively in Attio

This is where teams go wrong most often. The instinct is to open HubSpot, look at each workflow, and try to replicate it exactly in Attio.

Do not do this.

Attio's workflow builder works differently. Some things that required complex workarounds in HubSpot are straightforward in Attio. Some HubSpot workflows exist only because of how HubSpot structures its data model, and in Attio, you do not need them.

Start from your list of essential workflows (the ones from Step 1) and rebuild each one fresh, using Attio's native blocks:

• Trigger: record updated, list entry updated, attribute changed

• Conditions: guard blocks that filter to the records you care about

• Actions: update record, create task, send Slack notification, create deal

A few Attio-specific things to know:

• Objects vs Lists: this is the most common error. If your automation targets a pipeline or a custom list, use the "List entry updated" trigger and "Update list entry" action blocks. If you use "Record updated" / "Update record" for list targets, the workflow will not find what you are looking for.

• Email sequences: Attio has native sequences from the Plus plan, but they're less mature than HubSpot's. If your team relied on detailed per-step analytics or multi-channel cadences in HubSpot, you may want a dedicated sequencing tool alongside Attio for advanced outreach.

• Workflow testing: test with a different record than the one you used to set up the workflow. Updating the same record during setup can trigger intermediate empty-state saves that give false positive results.

Build the three or four automations that are genuinely core to your sales process. Leave the rest until you have been in Attio for a few weeks and know what you actually need.

Step 8: Set Up Integrations

With the data in and core workflows running, reconnect your stack.

Attio has native integrations for the tools most B2B sales teams use:

• Gmail and Google Calendar (two-way sync, fully automatic once connected)

• Outlook and Microsoft 365

• Slack (for workflow notifications)

• Zapier and Make.com (for anything without a native integration)

• Linear, Jira (for product-linked accounts)

• Segment (for product-qualified lead data)

For integrations that HubSpot had natively but Attio does not, you have two options: find an equivalent native Attio integration, or route through Zapier/Make. For most teams, the integrations that matter are email sync, calendar sync, and Slack. Attio handles these natively and well.

Step 9: Train Your Team

A clean CRM migration fails if the team does not know how to use the new system.

This does not need to be a full training programme. For most teams, a one-hour session covering three things is enough:

• How your data is structured in Attio (objects, lists, attributes, and why they are set up the way they are)

• How to log activity and update deals (the daily workflow)

• What the automations do, and when to expect them to fire

Write a two-page CRM playbook: how to add a new prospect, how to update a deal stage, how to log a call. Pin it in Slack. Most people learn by doing, but having something to refer back to prevents bad habits from forming.

Step 10: Run Parallel for 1-2 Weeks, Then Cut Over

Do not cut over immediately. Run both systems in parallel for one to two weeks.

During this window:

• Your team works in Attio as the primary system

• HubSpot stays live but read-only

• You check for anything missing in Attio that people are instinctively going back to HubSpot to find

• You identify any automation gaps or workflow misfires before HubSpot is gone

After one to two weeks, if the team is comfortable, you can start winding down HubSpot. But don't rush the cancellation.

If you're on an annual HubSpot contract, check your renewal date now. The last thing you want is to auto-renew for another year while you're mid-migration. Switch to monthly billing if your contract allows it, or time your migration to complete before the renewal window. It's easy to forget, and the uncertainty of a higher rate if you cancel and need to rejoin later can make people hesitate. Better to downgrade to a monthly plan or HubSpot Free while you run parallel, than to stay locked into an annual commitment you don't need.

As a rule of thumb, leave at least 4-6 weeks between starting your migration and cancelling HubSpot completely. That gives you time for the build, parallel running, and a buffer in case something surfaces that you missed.

What Transfers Cleanly vs What Needs Rebuilding

Transfers Cleanly

• Contact and company records, including custom properties

• Deal records and pipeline history

• Company-to-contact and deal-to-company associations

• Most standard field types (text, number, date, select)

• Tags and categories (with some manual cleanup)

Needs Rebuilding

• Email sequences and templates (no migration path, rebuild from scratch)

• Workflow automations (document them and rebuild natively in Attio)

• Saved filters and views (recreate in Attio using your data model)

• Reporting dashboards (Attio has its own reporting, rebuild your key reports)

• Integrations (all need to be reconnected, credentials do not transfer)

• Any automation logic that relied on HubSpot's marketing features

Does Not Exist in Attio (Know Before You Migrate)

• Marketing email sending (Attio is not a marketing platform)

• Landing pages and forms

• Ads integration and attribution

• Native meeting scheduling (use Calendly or Cal.com)

• A deal-level "forecast" view with probability weighting (Attio has revenue reporting but not HubSpot-style forecasting)

Common Migration Mistakes

Trying to Replicate HubSpot Exactly

This is the biggest one. Teams open HubSpot, look at their 47 custom properties and 23 active workflows, and try to rebuild every single one in Attio.

The result is an Attio workspace that inherits all of HubSpot's technical debt. All the workarounds, all the legacy fields no one remembers adding, all the workflows that compensated for a data model that never quite fit.

Use the migration as a reset. Bring across the data. Rebuild the processes fresh.

Migrating Without Cleaning First

We have seen this several times. A company exports 8,000 contacts from HubSpot, imports them all into Attio, and then spends three months trying to work in a workspace that is full of junk records.

Clean your data in HubSpot before you export. It is much easier to delete records in HubSpot's familiar interface than it is to run bulk cleanup scripts in a new platform you are still learning.

Forgetting to Map Custom Properties Before Importing

If you start the import and then realise your custom attributes do not exist in Attio yet, you either abort the import and start again, or you end up with a pile of unmapped columns that do not attach to anything.

Build your full Attio schema (Step 5) before importing a single record.

Not Rebuilding Email Sequences

Sequences in HubSpot are not contacts or companies or deals. They are a separate feature, and there is no migration path. If you have active sequences running, they need to be documented, and the contacts in them need to be tracked, before you close HubSpot down.

The same applies to any templates your team uses in HubSpot's email tool.

Cutting Over Too Fast

Teams get excited about the new platform and close HubSpot before the parallel running window is done. A week later, someone notices that four months of call log history is not visible, or a key integration was not reconnected, and there is no way back.

One to two weeks of parallel running is not bureaucracy. It is the safety net.

How Long It Takes

Most teams are fully migrated and live on Attio within four to six weeks, including parallel running.

Here is a more specific breakdown:

If you do this yourself, budget three to four weeks end to end. If you bring in an experienced partner, the build phase (architecture through integrations) can typically be compressed into one to two weeks of focused work, with training and parallel running following.

The bottleneck is almost always the data cleanup, not the technical migration. Clean data first.

What to Do With Your HubSpot Data After Migration

Do not delete your HubSpot account on day one.

Here is a sensible off-boarding process:

Week 1-2 (parallel period): Keep HubSpot fully live. Read-only reference only.

Month 1: After successful cut-over, downgrade to HubSpot Free if you need ongoing access, or pause the subscription. Do not export and delete yet.

Month 2: At this point, you should have a good sense of whether anything is missing. If not, export a full data backup (JSON via API or CSV via UI) of everything. Store it somewhere safe: Google Drive, a shared folder, a backup service.

Month 3: With the backup archived and the team fully settled in Attio, you can let the HubSpot account lapse or cancel.

What to archive before you cancel:

• A full contacts export with all properties

• A full companies export

• A full deals export including closed-lost deals

• Email templates (copy-paste into a Google Doc)

• Any reporting or dashboards you want to reference historically

The historical data is the thing most teams regret not keeping. Win rates by quarter, average deal size by segment, source attribution from two years ago. If there are reports in HubSpot you look at regularly, screenshot them or export the underlying data before you leave.

What Happens After Migration

A clean migration is the start, not the finish.

The teams that get the most out of Attio are the ones that spend the first 30-60 days after go-live iterating on their setup. They add attributes they realise they need. They simplify workflows that are firing too often. They improve their list structure as the pipeline grows.

The other thing to think about: Attio data degrades like any CRM data. Contacts change jobs. Deals go stale. Duplicates creep in. Without a monitoring layer, you end up back where you started with HubSpot in 18 months, just on a different platform.

We run alaiOS, our CRM monitoring system, on every Attio workspace we build. It watches for stale deals, contact role changes, duplicate records, schema drift, and relationship gaps. The issues get flagged before they turn into real problems.

That is probably a conversation for after your migration is done. But it is worth knowing it exists.

Need Help With Your Migration?

We have run this migration for multiple teams. We know HubSpot from the inside and we build on Attio full-time as Expert Partners.

If you want someone to run the audit, design the architecture, clean the data, and get your team live, we do this as a fixed-scope engagement.

The typical migration takes one to two weeks of build work, then a one to two week parallel period before full cut-over. Most clients are fully live within four to six weeks from kick-off.

Book a free consultation and we will look at your current HubSpot setup and tell you exactly what is involved.

Book a free consultation