Please Simplify the Complicated Contact Upload Process

[KSandy]

I have used tons of CRM (email autoresponders and email list) over the past 10 years and this is the most complicated.

With other CRM I just upload my list and tehy just accept what I have and alig it to their system. It’s a no-brainer.

I went through the process to “Import Contacts” into HubSpot, which I downloaded from my another CRM. I thought that Hubspot would be better.

After trying for several hours and only getting errors about; “Association record”, “Unique Identifier” and “Record ID” I got fedup.

It was great to see that HubSpot had a "Download sample spreadsheet".

I just compied my data into that spreadsheet, thinking that it would align with HubSpot’s system easier.

The sheet had had 3 columns (Email Address, Fist Name and Last Name.

After receiving an email from HubSpot saying that, "Your import “Online_Audience.csv” is ready. I went to see with exited expectation!

It was a sign of releive to see my list completely uploaded in HubSpot. I was able to see the name of my list “Online_Audience.csv”, as shown in the image below.

However, when I click on the list, I am not able to see my contacts.

See here that No contacts are showing when I click the file

There are too many steps and options. The vidoes and documentations show several complicated steps and then says that’s all. It’s not as simple as it looks.

Please tell me:

Whats the simplest way to resover this problem?

When can I get access to my contacts?

When can you simplify this process from 7 steps to 3 steps?

[SamCBarth_LAIRE]

Hi! @KSandy
The most straightforward way to get contacts into the system is to upload a list - if you dont want to go through mapping everything over and over again, you can create a template by repeating a past import
The simplest mapping would be to map only emails and then select Dont import data in unmapped columns - this will create contacts with only emails - if you want other fields you would need to map them

[Berangere]

Hi @KSandy,
Thanks for reaching out to the HubSpot Community and thanks @SamCBarth_LAIRE for your help!
I’m sorry to hear about your experience regarding this.
I would like to apologize for the frustration, data issues, and business impact this has caused.
I can see from your screenshots that 116 “new records” and 36 “error count”. I also see some associations.
- If you’d like to only add new contacts, you’ll need a column with your email addresses, since this is the unique identifier in HubSpot.
- If you’d like to edit existing contacts, you’ll need to export the contacts (to get the “record ID”), then update the information, then import it in HubSpot.
- If you’d like to add contacts and associate them with other objects (companies or tickets etc.), on 1 line, you’ll need to have the information of the contact and of the company you’d like to associate the contact with.
If the object you will associate the contacts with is already in HubSpot, I’d recommend that you export first these objects, to get their “Record ID” and then you’ll be able to add these on the same line as the contact you want to associate it with.
Please let me know exactly what you are trying to do and we can see that together.
You can also click on the “36” to see which type of errors you are getting.
Here are some articles that might help you:
- Set up import files
- Import records and activities
- Review and troubleshoot import errors
And please @KSandy, let me know if there is anything else I can help with. I’ll be delighted to do so!
Best,
Bérangère

[OguzOz]

@KSandy totally hear you — HubSpot’s native import flow is genuinely one of the more frustrating onboarding experiences out there, especially if you’re coming from tools that just accept your CSV and figure it out. The association errors and unique identifier requirements trip up a lot of people who are otherwise totally comfortable importing data.

A few things that tend to help: (1) strip your CSV down to just email + first/last name for a first pass to get contacts in, then update properties separately. (2) make sure your column headers exactly match HubSpot property names or use a past import as a template.

If you’re going to be doing this regularly, I’ve also been building a tool specifically for this problem — it’s called Emport (emport.io). It auto-maps your CSV columns to HubSpot fields using AI, catches duplicates before they land in your CRM, and handles non-standard column names without you having to rename everything. Might be worth a try for future imports.