How to Switch CRM Systems Without Losing Data | CRM Compared

The $50,000 Mistake Most Teams Don’t See Coming

About 30% of CRM migrations result in significant data loss. Not because the technology failed — because nobody planned the mapping properly. I’ve watched companies lose years of customer interaction history, duplicate 40% of their contact records, and accidentally sever integrations that fed their entire sales pipeline. The switch itself usually takes 4–12 weeks. Recovering from a bad one takes 6–12 months.

This guide covers the exact process I use when migrating clients between CRM systems. It’s the same whether you’re moving from spreadsheets to HubSpot, from Salesforce to Pipedrive, or between any two platforms.

Before You Touch Any Data: The Pre-Migration Audit

The single biggest predictor of migration success isn’t the tool you’re moving to. It’s how well you understand what you’re moving from.

Document Every Field, Custom Object, and Automation

Open your current CRM and create a complete inventory. I mean every single field — standard and custom. Every automation rule. Every workflow. Every integration endpoint. Most teams skip this step because it’s tedious. Then they discover three months post-migration that their lead scoring model relied on a custom field that didn’t make the trip.

Here’s what your audit document should include:

Field inventory: Field name, field type, whether it’s required, how many records have data in it, and what it maps to in the new system
Automation inventory: Every workflow, sequence, or automation rule, including triggers and actions
Integration inventory: Every third-party tool connected, what data flows between them, and which direction
Report inventory: Every report and dashboard your team actually uses (emphasis on “actually” — most CRMs have 50+ reports and 8 that anyone looks at)

This audit typically takes 2–3 days for a small CRM with under 10,000 contacts. For enterprise instances of Salesforce with custom objects, budget 1–2 weeks.

Decide What NOT to Migrate

Here’s where most teams go wrong: they try to move everything. Don’t. Your old CRM is full of dead weight. Contacts who haven’t engaged in three years. Deals that were marked “lost” in 2022. Activity logs for employees who left the company.

I use a simple rule: if nobody has looked at or used a record in 18 months, it goes into an archive export (a CSV you store somewhere safe) but doesn’t enter the new system. On average, this cuts migration volume by 35–50%. Less data means fewer things to break, faster migration, and a cleaner starting point.

Your next step: Block out a half-day to complete the field and integration audit. Use a spreadsheet with columns for source field, target field, data type, and transformation needed.

Data Mapping: The Part Everyone Underestimates

Data mapping is matching fields from your old CRM to fields in your new one. It sounds simple. It isn’t.

The Three Types of Mapping Problems

1. Field type mismatches. Your old CRM stored “Deal Value” as a text field (someone typed “$10,000”). Your new CRM expects a number field (10000). You need a transformation step. Multiply this by dozens of fields and you’ve got a real project on your hands.

2. One-to-many splits. Your old system had a single “Address” field. Your new system has separate fields for street, city, state, and zip. You’ll need parsing logic, and it won’t be 100% accurate — expect to manually fix 5–10% of records.

3. Missing target fields. Your old CRM tracked “Preferred Contact Method” with options like Phone, Email, Text, and Carrier Pigeon (every CRM has at least one bizarre custom field). Your new CRM doesn’t have this field. Do you create a custom field, merge it into notes, or drop it? This decision needs to involve the people who actually use that data.

Build Your Mapping Document

Create a mapping spreadsheet with these columns:

Source Field	Source Type	Target Field	Target Type	Transformation	Notes
Company Name	Text	Company Name	Text	None	Direct map
Deal Amount	Text	Amount	Currency	Strip $ and commas, convert to number	Check for non-numeric values
Lead Status	Dropdown (8 options)	Lifecycle Stage	Dropdown (5 options)	Map: “Hot Lead” → “SQL”, “Warm Lead” → “MQL”…	Requires team agreement on mapping

This document becomes your single source of truth. Every migration mistake I’ve seen traces back to either not having this document or not following it.

Handle Relationships Carefully

Contacts linked to companies. Deals linked to contacts. Activities linked to deals. These relationships are the real value in your CRM, and they’re the hardest thing to migrate.

Most migration tools handle this through ID mapping — they create a reference table that says “Old Record ID 12345 = New Record ID 67890.” If this mapping breaks, you end up with orphaned records: deals floating in space with no associated contact, activities attached to the wrong person.

The fix: Migrate in dependency order. Companies first, then contacts (linked to companies), then deals (linked to contacts), then activities (linked to deals). Never try to migrate everything in one flat batch.

Your next step: Complete your mapping document for at least the core objects (contacts, companies, deals) before evaluating any migration tools.

Choosing Your Migration Method

You’ve got three options, each with real tradeoffs.

Option 1: Native Import Tools

Every CRM has CSV import functionality. HubSpot has a solid import wizard. Salesforce has Data Loader. These work fine for simple migrations under 50,000 records with straightforward field mapping.

Pros: Free, built into the platform, no third-party risk. Cons: Limited transformation capabilities, relationship mapping is manual, large imports can time out or fail silently.

Option 2: Dedicated Migration Tools

Services like Trujay, Import2, and CRM migration features in platforms like Pipedrive handle the heavy lifting. They understand CRM data structures and can map relationships automatically.

Pros: Relationship preservation, data transformation built in, usually faster. Cons: Cost ($1–5 per record for complex migrations), you’re trusting a third party with your customer data, and they don’t know your business logic.

Option 3: Custom Scripts / ETL Tools

For complex migrations — especially ones involving custom objects, heavy transformation, or 500,000+ records — you may need custom Python scripts or an ETL tool like Fivetran or Stitch.

Pros: Total control, can handle any edge case, repeatable. Cons: Requires technical resources, takes longer to build, bugs can corrupt data at scale.

My recommendation: For most small-to-mid-market companies (under 100,000 records, fewer than 10 custom objects), Option 1 or 2 works. If you’ve got a heavily customized Salesforce instance with custom objects and Apex triggers, you’re probably looking at Option 3.

The Test Migration: Your Safety Net

Never — and I cannot stress this enough — never migrate directly into your live new CRM instance on the first attempt.

Run a Sandbox Migration First

Every major CRM offers sandbox or test environments. Salesforce has full sandbox orgs. HubSpot has test accounts. Use them.

Take 1,000 representative records from your source CRM. Include a mix of complete and incomplete records, old and new records, and records with complex relationship chains. Run your full migration process against the sandbox.

Then verify:

Record counts: Did 1,000 contacts in produce 1,000 contacts out? Or did you get 1,147 because of duplicate creation?
Field accuracy: Spot-check 50 records manually. Compare every field between source and target. I guarantee you’ll find at least 3–5 mapping errors on the first pass.
Relationships: Are deals still connected to the right contacts? Are activities on the right timeline?
Automations: Did any workflows in the new CRM fire on the imported data? (This is a classic gotcha — you import 10,000 contacts and your welcome email sequence sends to all of them.)

The Automation Trap

Disable every automation, workflow, and sequence in your new CRM before importing. Every single one. I’ve seen a migration trigger 15,000 “Welcome to our CRM” emails to existing customers. I’ve seen lead assignment rules distribute 8,000 records across a sales team in 30 seconds, crashing everyone’s task queue.

After import, selectively re-enable automations and verify they work correctly with the migrated data.

Your next step: Set up a sandbox environment in your target CRM today. Even if you’re weeks from migration, having this ready removes a bottleneck later.

Go-Live Day: A Checklist That Actually Works

After your test migration checks out (run it at least twice), you’re ready for the real thing. Here’s the sequence I use:

48 Hours Before

Freeze data entry in the old CRM. Set a company-wide cutoff. Any deals updated after this point need to be manually reconciled.
Run a final export from the source CRM. This is your migration source AND your backup.
Disable all automations in the target CRM.
Confirm sandbox test migration passed all checks within the last 7 days.

Migration Day

Run the migration during off-hours. Weekend mornings work best — you’ve got the full day to troubleshoot if something breaks.
Import in dependency order: Companies → Contacts → Deals → Activities → Custom Objects.
After each object import, run your verification checks before proceeding.
Keep the old CRM running in read-only mode. Don’t decommission it yet.

24 Hours After

Have 3–5 power users spend 30 minutes each verifying their own data. They’ll catch things automated checks miss.
Re-enable automations one at a time, testing each.
Verify all integrations are pointing to the new CRM and flowing data correctly.
Check that reports and dashboards in the new system show reasonable numbers.

30 Days After

Run a data quality report: duplicate rate, field completion rate, orphaned records.
Collect user feedback on missing data or broken workflows.
Decommission the old CRM (but keep your backup exports for at least 12 months).

The Five Mistakes That Kill CRM Migrations

I’ve seen the same failures across dozens of projects. Here’s what to watch for:

1. Migrating Dirty Data

If your current CRM has 12,000 duplicate contacts, your new CRM will have 12,000 duplicate contacts. Migration doesn’t fix data quality — it transfers it. Clean before you move. Deduplication alone typically takes 1–2 weeks for a mid-size database.

2. Ignoring User Adoption

A technically perfect migration means nothing if your team hates the new system. Start training 2–3 weeks before go-live, not after. Aim for at least 4 hours of hands-on training per user. Companies that invest in pre-migration training see 72% higher adoption rates in the first 90 days compared to those who train post-launch.

3. No Rollback Plan

What if the migration fails catastrophically? You need to be able to answer “then what?” before go-live. At minimum, maintain your old CRM in a working state for 30 days post-migration. Keep complete data exports from the source system stored in at least two locations.

4. Underestimating Timeline

I’ve never seen a CRM migration that took less time than planned. Add 50% to whatever estimate you come up with. A “simple” migration for a 20-person team typically takes 6–8 weeks end-to-end. Complex enterprise migrations run 4–6 months.

5. Skipping the Integration Audit

Your CRM doesn’t exist in isolation. It talks to your email platform, your billing system, your support desk, your marketing automation, your phone system. Every one of those connections needs to be re-established with the new CRM. I’ve seen companies lose 2–3 weeks of support ticket data because nobody remembered to update the Zendesk integration.

What This Costs (Realistically)

Let’s talk money, because migration budgets are almost always too low.

Small team (under 5,000 contacts, basic CRM): $500–2,000 if you do it yourself using native tools. $2,000–5,000 with a migration service.

Mid-market (5,000–100,000 contacts, moderate customization): $5,000–15,000 with a migration service. $10,000–30,000 with consultant support.

Enterprise (100,000+ contacts, heavy customization, multiple integrations): $25,000–100,000+ depending on complexity. Budget for 2–3 months of consultant time.

These numbers include data cleanup, migration execution, integration reconnection, and basic training. They don’t include the cost of the new CRM subscription itself or extended change management programs.

If you’re currently evaluating which CRM to move to, check our CRM comparison pages to see detailed feature and pricing breakdowns before committing.

Make the Switch With Confidence

The difference between a migration that takes 6 weeks and one that takes 6 months almost always comes down to preparation. Get your audit done, build your mapping document, and run test migrations before touching production data. These three steps prevent 80% of migration disasters.

If you’re still deciding on your target platform, start with our CRM comparison tools or read our detailed reviews of HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive to find the right fit before you begin planning the move.

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