Migrating from Hubspot Sales to Salesforce - What functionality will be lost?

[Bret]

Hello,

We're considering moving off of Hubspot Sales and on to Salesforce.  We will continue to use Hubspot for marketing. 

If we were to make this switch, what type of functionality will we lose?  Has anyone had experience with this transition?  Did it go smoothly, or was it a nightmare?  One example topis that comes to mind would be:  Can you segment Hubspot contacts based on criteria in Salesforce?

Cheers,

Bret

[AST]

Hi Bret, 

How did this migration go for you? We use the HubSpot free CRM and the Marketing Hub. Looking into HubSpot Sales, but when you add everything up the price is comparable to Salesforce for us. 

Anything advice you can offer would be great. THanks!

Molly

[Bret]

Hi Molly,

The switch from Hubspot Sales to Salesforce went pretty smoothly.  Our workflows continued to work.  I can't recall the details, but I believe that file attachments to contacts and companies were an issue.  You might want to focus on those before switching over.

However, in the long run, we ended up moving back to Hubspot Sales.  When using Hubspot for our CRM and Salesforce for sales, synchronization was always a problem.  Sales was constantly troubleshooting issues where contacts were mysteriously assigned to the wrong salesperson, or had properties cleared or populated magically.  That there's even a "Sync Errors" screen in Hubspot should be a sign that things may, and definitely will, go wrong.

Our Sales Team eventually went through some staff changes, and the new staff were more amiable to the Hubspot Sales tools, which is why we changed back.  Everything is purring along again now that Salesforce is out of the way.

Of course, you might need Salesforce for all sorts of reasons, so going purly Hubspot may not be an option for you.  I'm just giving you my experience in case it helps.

[AST]

Thank you for the quick response! 

I'm curious if the contact's timeline was smoothly transferred - like the email correspondence with the salesperson, landing page views, form submissions, etc. 

If a new lead came in through a HubSpot landing page, how was it assigned to a salesperson in Salesforce?

Our US office uses HubSpot CRM and we are now looking to get our global sales force on the same page. HubSpot currently only allows one currency per account which is a big issue for us.  Based on the activity I've seen here, it doesn't look like HubSpot is going to fix the issue anytime soon. 

Thanks again!

[Nataliia]

Hi Bret, you can try an automated migration service Data2CRM to move the from Hubspot Sales to Salesforce. The SaaS excludes a possibility of any data loss as the service treats the information privately and offers you to sign Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA).

[bradmin · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Bret. This is mostly a function of what expectations your HubSpot Sales users have, and how quickly they can adopt to a new tool. You won't lose any functionality between the two systems, but your team will have to get used to doing things in a new platform - one that has a lot more options and customization.

Your team may have expectations that "this thing works in Salesforce, so it should work in HubSpot." While HubSpot and Salesforce can communicate a lot with one another, it won't be entirely 1:1.

If your sales team is used to the streamlined look and feel of HubSpot Sales, you'll want to consider making a simple and easy interface for them to use, with a minimum of required data entry. Validation rules, third-party integrations, business logic, and workflow automation should also be kept to a minimum (or runs in the background, and isn't something interruptive). 

One of the biggest changes you'll encounter with the switch is dealing with an entirely new schema. Whereas in HubSpot, you have the straightforward contact/company/deal/engagement schema, Salesforce has a ton more standard objects (including ones which have a name overlap but entirely different functionality, like campaigns), and the ability to create custom objects.

This increases the complexity, and creates a lot more relationships between data in Salesforce, than HubSpot. In a practical sense, the Salesforce connector used with the HubSpot marketing product can become an exercise in, "How can I get all the necessary information in Salesforce, into the places the HubSpot connector is looking for?"

Starting simple in Salesforce will help make this more manageable, and make it easier on your users to adapt to the change. Just because you'll have the ability to customize a lot more to suit your enterprise, doesn't mean the team will quickly embrace those changes. If your team does adapt quickly, you'll be able to leverage a lot of what Salesforce can offer. Then, it becomes a matter of configuring how HubSpot and Salesforce talk to one another, to suit your needs.  

If you do move off of HubSpot Sales, and will use HubSpot Marketing and Salesforce together, I strongly recommend configuring the initial HubSpot-Salesforce logic, before importing any records into Salesforce. [Optionally, this includes setting up an inclusion list, if you don't want every single record from HubSpot Marketing in Salesforce.] Then, have HubSpot push all of its company/contact/deal/engagement data for relevant contacts to Salesforce.

There's not much that can go "wrong", although hastily configuring, or importing, or syncing tons of records without a clear plan can come back and bite you. Plan carefully, start small, and make changes your team can adapt to, and you should be okay. 

You'll also want to review all HubSpot help documentation, and/or contact customer support, for questions about what typical API call usage might look like for the Salesforce connector.