Key Takeaways
- HighLevel has a native HubSpot importer, so moving a CRM no longer means exporting a pile of CSV files and hoping the columns line up.
- It pulls contacts, deals, custom fields and pipelines, and keeps the associations between them if you select the related objects together.
- Fix your duplicate settings before you import. Contact matching goes to email, and opportunities need multiple records per contact allowed.
- Import into a clean sub-account first, so errors show up instead of hiding inside data you already had.
- The import runs in the background, and you can rerun it and check the import history if something looks off.
Most business owners we talk to are not scared of HighLevel. They are scared of the move. They have four years of deals sitting in HubSpot, and the thought of dragging all of it across is what keeps them paying for a CRM they already outgrew. HighLevel just made that a lot less painful. A new tutorial on the HighLevel YouTube channel walks through a native HubSpot importer that connects straight to your HubSpot account and brings your data over without a single spreadsheet. We build these systems every week at On Point Tech Solutions out of Los Gatos, so here is the plain version of how it works and where it bites if you are shopping for Go High Level San Jose help.
Why the Native Importer Beats a CSV Export
The old way to migrate was to export each object out of HubSpot as its own file, rebuild your custom fields by hand, then spend a weekend mapping columns. And you still lost the links between a contact and the deal attached to them.
The native importer skips all of that. You connect your HubSpot account through a sign in prompt, and HighLevel reads the objects directly. Because it is talking to HubSpot instead of a flat file, it can preserve the associations between records. Select the related objects together in the wizard and a contact still carries its deal, its custom field values and its place in your pipeline when it lands on the other side.
Set Your Duplicate Rules Before You Touch the Importer
This is the part people skip, and it is the part that creates a mess. Two settings need to change first.
Contacts. Open Settings from the bottom left of the sub-account, scroll down through the business settings to contact preferences, and set duplicate matching to email. Then set the option below it to none. Email is the only field that is reliably unique across a HubSpot database, so matching on anything else invents duplicates.
Opportunities. Go to Objects on the left, click Opportunities, and turn on the setting that allows multiple opportunities per contact. Save your changes. HighLevel defaults to one opportunity per contact, which is fine for a fresh account and wrong for an import. A repeat customer with six closed deals in HubSpot should arrive with six, not one.
Do both of these before you start. Changing them afterward does not go back and repair what already imported.
Running the Import
There are a couple of places to start an import inside a sub-account. You can launch it from the Opportunities section, or from Import Data in the settings. From Contacts, click Import in the top right and you get two options: import records from a file, or import from HubSpot. Pick the HubSpot option and it prompts you to sign in if the account is not connected yet.
The wizard opens with its own recommendations, and they are worth reading. Clean up duplicates inside HubSpot first, back up your current data, and review the field mappings before you start rather than after. From there you select which HubSpot objects to bring over, choose the data inside them, set how duplicate records get handled, and check the details and mappings on a summary screen.
Then you start it. The import runs in the background, so you do not have to sit on the page and watch. You get progress and stats while it processes, and when it finishes you verify that contacts, deals, custom fields and pipelines all landed where you expect. If something came across wrong, rerun the import and review the import history to see what each pass did.
Import Into a Clean Account First
The best recommendation in the whole tutorial is to run the import into a clean sub-account instead of your live one with three years of contacts already in it. When the account is empty, every record that shows up came from HubSpot, so a duplicate or a deal in the wrong pipeline is visible in about ten minutes of scrolling. Import into a populated account and those same errors hide inside data that was already there. You find them six weeks later when a workflow fires at the wrong person.
Treat the first import as a dry run you are allowed to throw away. Look at it, fix the mappings, then do it properly.
Why This Matters for Bay Area and San Jose Businesses
HubSpot pricing scales with your contact count, and it scales fast. For a lot of the Bay Area businesses we sit down with, a service company in San Jose, a broker in Santa Clara, a shop in Los Gatos, the CRM bill quietly became one of the largest software line items on the books. They looked at HighLevel, ran the numbers, and then stalled at the migration. The switching friction cost them more than the software ever did.
A native importer removes most of that friction, so the decision goes back to being about which platform actually runs your business better. It also changes what a migration project looks like on our end. When the data move is a wizard instead of a two week cleanup, the hours go into rebuilding your pipelines properly and wiring the automations, which is the whole reason to switch.
Practical Steps
- Spin up a clean HighLevel sub-account to import into. Do not aim at your live account on the first pass.
- Set contact duplicate matching to email under Settings, and set the option below it to none.
- Turn on multiple opportunities per contact under Objects, then Opportunities, and save.
- Clean up obvious duplicates inside HubSpot and back up your data before you start.
- Go to Contacts, click Import, choose Import from HubSpot, and sign in to connect the account.
- Select the objects you want together so the associations between them survive.
- Review the field mappings on the summary screen. This is your last easy chance to catch a bad map.
- Start the import, let it run in the background, then verify contacts, deals, custom fields and pipelines against HubSpot.
- Rerun the import or check the import history if anything looks wrong, then repeat the clean pass into your real account.
Watch the HighLevel Walkthrough
Final Thoughts
The importer handles the data. What it does not handle is whether your pipelines and your follow up are built the way your business actually runs, and that part still takes someone who has done it before.
On Point Tech Solutions is a Go High Level consultant in Los Gatos serving San Jose and the wider Bay Area. We build websites, funnels, and automation systems on HighLevel, and our clients own what we build. You can have it done for you, or we will teach your team with an SOP so you are never locked into anyone. If you are weighing a move off HubSpot and want a straight answer about whether it is worth it, come talk to us at optechsol.llc.