How to Switch from HubSpot to Sambandh (Step-by-Step Guide)

HubSpot is a powerful platform. It is also, for a growing number of founders and small teams, more tool than they need and more cost than they can justify. If you have been paying for features you do not use, wrestling with a UI that was designed for enterprise sales floors, or watching your monthly bill climb with every new seat and add-on, you are not alone.

Switching CRMs sounds intimidating. It should not be. This guide walks you through the entire process of moving from HubSpot to Sambandh, step by step. Most teams complete the migration in under 10 minutes.

Why Teams Are Leaving HubSpot

Before we get into the how, it helps to understand the why. The most common reasons we hear from teams making the switch fall into three categories.

Cost escalation. HubSpot's free plan is genuinely useful, but the moment you need features like custom reporting, sequences, or more than one sales pipeline, you are looking at Starter ($20/user/mo), Professional ($800/mo), or Enterprise ($3,600/mo). For a three-person team that just needs a solid CRM, those numbers are hard to swallow.

Feature bloat. HubSpot has grown into an everything platform: CRM, marketing automation, CMS, service desk, operations hub. If you only need contact management and a sales pipeline, navigating through menus designed for a full-stack marketing operation slows you down every day.

Complexity overhead. Custom objects, workflows, lifecycle stages, lead statuses, marketing contacts vs. non-marketing contacts. HubSpot's data model is powerful, but for small teams it often means spending more time configuring the system than using it.

If any of that resonates, here is how to make the move.

Step 1: Export Your Data from HubSpot

HubSpot makes it straightforward to export your data as CSV files. Here is how to do it for each record type.

For contacts: Go to Contacts in the main navigation. Click the "Actions" dropdown and select "Export." Choose CSV format. You can export all contacts or use filters to export a subset. HubSpot will email you a download link when the export is ready, usually within a few minutes.

For companies: Navigate to Contacts then Companies. Same process: Actions, Export, CSV.

For deals: Go to Sales then Deals. Switch to the table view if you are in the board view, then export as CSV.

For notes and activities: These can be included as associated data when you export contacts. Make sure to select the relevant properties during export.

Save all your CSV files somewhere easy to find. You will need them in the next step.

Step 2: Visit the Migration Tool

Open moveto.sambandh.io/from/hubspot in your browser. This is Sambandh's dedicated migration tool, built specifically for CRM-to-CRM transfers.

If you do not have a Sambandh account yet, you can create one for free. The free plan supports up to 50 contacts, which is enough to test the migration with a sample before committing to a full import. If you have more than 50 contacts, start a 14-day Pro trial to import everything.

Step 3: Upload Your CSV and Map Fields

Drag your exported CSV file onto the upload area, or click to browse for it. The migration tool will parse your file and display a preview of the data it found.

Here is where things get easy. Sambandh's field mapper uses auto-detection to match your HubSpot columns to Sambandh fields. Standard fields like First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone, Company Name, and Deal Stage are recognized automatically. For most HubSpot exports, 80 to 90 percent of your fields will be mapped without any manual effort.

For any fields that are not auto-detected, you can manually map them using the dropdown menus. If you have HubSpot custom properties that do not match a standard Sambandh field, the tool will offer to create custom fields for them automatically.

Step 4: Configure Duplicate Handling

If you are importing data that might overlap with contacts already in Sambandh, the migration tool gives you three options for handling duplicates.

Skip duplicates. If a contact with the same email address already exists in Sambandh, the import will skip that row. This is the safest option if you have already added some contacts manually.

Merge duplicates. The import will update existing records with any new information from the CSV while preserving data that already exists. This is useful if your HubSpot export has more complete data than what you have entered in Sambandh so far.

Create new records. Every row in the CSV becomes a new contact, regardless of whether a match exists. Only use this if you are sure there is no overlap.

For most HubSpot migrations, "Skip duplicates" is the right choice for a first import.

Step 5: Import and Verify

Click "Start Import" and watch the progress bar. For a typical export of 500 contacts, the import takes about 5 to 10 minutes. Larger datasets may take a bit longer but rarely more than 30 minutes.

Once the import completes, the tool shows you a summary: how many records were imported, how many were skipped, and whether any rows had issues that need your attention.

Take a few minutes to spot-check your data. Open 5 to 10 contacts at random and verify that names, emails, company associations, and notes came through correctly. Check that your deals are in the right pipeline stages. Look at a few activity timelines to make sure historical notes are attached to the right records.

What Transfers

Here is what you can expect to bring over from HubSpot.

• Contacts. Names, emails, phone numbers, job titles, and all standard contact properties.
• Companies. Company names, domains, industry, and size information.
• Deals. Deal names, values, stages, close dates, and associated contacts.
• Notes. Contact and deal notes are preserved and attached to the correct records.
• Tags and labels. HubSpot tags map to Sambandh tags.
• Custom fields. Any custom properties you created in HubSpot can be imported as custom fields in Sambandh.

What does not transfer automatically includes HubSpot workflows and automation rules, email templates, and form submissions. These are HubSpot-specific features that need to be recreated in Sambandh. The good news is that Sambandh's automation and campaign tools are simpler to set up, so rebuilding usually takes less time than the original configuration did in HubSpot.

After the Migration

Once your data is in Sambandh, there are a few things worth setting up right away.

Connect your email. Link your Gmail or Outlook account so that emails are automatically logged against contact records. This is the single highest-value feature for day-to-day CRM usage.

Configure your pipelines. If your HubSpot setup had multiple pipelines, recreate them in Sambandh with the same stages. Deals will be assigned to stages based on the mapping you set during import.

Set up lead scoring. If you were using HubSpot's lead scoring, configure scoring rules in Sambandh based on your criteria. Sambandh includes lead scoring on the Pro plan at no additional cost, whereas HubSpot charges for it as part of the Marketing Hub.

Invite your team. If you are on the Teams plan, add your team members and configure their access levels.

The Cost Difference

For most small teams, the financial case for switching is straightforward. A three-person team on HubSpot Professional pays $800/mo or more. The same team on Sambandh Teams pays $147/mo ($49/seat) with access to every feature, including campaigns, lead scoring, and unlimited contacts. That is a savings of over $7,800 per year.

Even compared to HubSpot Starter at $20/user/mo, Sambandh Pro at $19/mo for a single user gives you more features for a comparable price, and without the pressure to upgrade to increasingly expensive tiers as your needs grow.

Ready to Switch?

The migration tool is live at moveto.sambandh.io/from/hubspot. For a detailed feature comparison, visit sambandh.io/compare/hubspot.

If you run into any issues during migration or have questions about mapping specific HubSpot properties, reach out through the in-app chat. We have helped hundreds of teams make the switch and are happy to walk you through it.