Recap of our LinkedIn Live, “HubSpot Migrations: Beyond the Lift and Shift,” with Mark Goloboy (Founder, Market Growth Consulting), Ally Long (Revenue Operations and Engineering, Market Growth Consulting), and Jon Svensson (Prairie Path Marketing).
We’ve spent most of this year on HubSpot migrations, moving clients off Eloqua, Pardot, and Salesforce CRM. Nobody has ever handed us a legacy platform and said, “just move it over as is.” And if they did, we’d talk them out of it.
Why a HubSpot migration can’t be a lift and shift
Jon put it best: Eloqua, Pardot, and HubSpot are all the same rooms with the same furniture, but the furniture is in different places. Your processes have to adapt to the platform, not the other way around. On a migration we’re wrapping up now, we inventoried every field and found that many of them only existed because the legacy platform couldn’t accomplish a task natively.
Use the move to rebuild how your revenue team works
A migration to HubSpot is a real opportunity to rethink how your team operates. Ally’s advice is to start from where you want to get to, not what’s broken today. Start asking and answering questions like:
- What would make my job easier?
- What data should I be able to reach without a workaround?
- Can I assess the health of the things that actually matter, in real time?
Then work backward and build the platform to fit. Most teams have spent a decade crowbarring the system into doing half of what they need. Shedding the “because we always did it that way” logic is where a HubSpot migration pays for itself. And if you keep a process as is, document why. AI tools connected through HubSpot’s MCP server don’t know what “Contact Type OLD DO NOT USE” means. That documentation is now the roadmap AI needs to work with your data, which is a big part of why companies are migrating to HubSpot in the first place.
Why enterprise companies are now migrating to HubSpot
Three years ago, an enterprise team would have shut down a HubSpot conversation instantly. Ally admits she was that person. So what changed?
- HubSpot went all in on AI early. Its MCP server has been out for the better part of a year, and we’ve built agentic workflows against it that generate 80 to 90 percent of a campaign in minutes.
- They listen and ship fast. HubSpot’s product teams have a direct line to customers, and the release feed shows it.
- They fix the architecture instead of layering on top of it. The leads object supports what a lead actually is in B2B, and sometimes it happens on the tenth conversation, not the first.
HubSpot migration checklist: three questions to ask first
- Are you assessing the most current version of HubSpot? The landscape has changed significantly in three years.
- Are you improving the lead management, not just the platform? Confirm the lead handoff, scoring model, and campaign structure before you migrate.
- Are you comparing total cost of ownership, not price tag? Our HubSpot clients run leaner marketing ops, because the people doing the marketing can work in the platform themselves.
HubSpot migration FAQ
How long does a HubSpot migration take?
It depends on how much you’re moving and how much you’re willing to leave behind. A focused marketing automation migration typically runs 4 to 8 weeks, and a combined CRM and marketing migration runs longer, typically 3 to 5 months. The field inventory and process review at the start are what keep the timeline honest.
What does a HubSpot migration cost?
Look at the total cost of ownership rather than the license alone. Legacy platforms like Eloqua and Pardot usually require a dedicated admin or outside consultant for routine changes. HubSpot lets the people doing the marketing work in the platform themselves, which is where savings can show up.
Should we migrate our CRM to HubSpot at the same time as marketing?
Not always, but it’s worth evaluating. We’re finishing a Salesforce to HubSpot CRM migration this month, and having marketing, sales, and BDR teams in one system removes the handoff problems that legacy stacks create.