How to switch from Hunter to lemlist without losing leads

Why sales teams outgrow Hunter (and when it makes sense to switch)

Hunter Campaigns is email-only, with no LinkedIn touches, no phone call tasks, and no multichannel sequences. That’s the core reason teams start looking elsewhere. There’s no A/B testing for subject lines or email body variations, no lead scoring, and no automatic follow-up logic based on engagement signals.

If all you do is find emails and send simple cold sequences, Hunter works well. For a freelancer sending 50 outreach emails per week, Campaigns is perfectly fine, and the interface is clean. The friction shows up when your outbound motion grows past email alone.

Here’s a side-by-side look at where the two platforms overlap and where they don’t:

The pattern is clear. Hunter covers the “find and email” part of outbound. Once you want to add channels, enrich contacts with phone numbers, monitor deliverability, or act on intent signals, you either bolt on more tools or move to a platform that already combines all of it.

What transfers, what improves, and what you’ll rebuild

Before you export a single CSV, set your expectations. Some things move cleanly. Others don’t.

Data and fields that transfer cleanly

Hunter CSV exports preserve all metadata: email, confidence score, department, seniority, and LinkedIn URL where available. Contact records (name, company, title, custom attributes) map directly into lemlist as variables during import.

If you use tags or lists inside Hunter to organize leads, label them before exporting. Those labels become a column in your CSV, which you can use to segment leads once they’re in lemlist.

Capabilities you gain in lemlist

Once you’re on lemlist, the biggest shift is going from single-channel to multichannel. You can add LinkedIn visits, connection requests, call steps, SMS, and WhatsApp touches alongside email in the same campaign. Beyond sequencing, you also gain:

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  Waterfall enrichment: lemlist queries 14+ data providers to find and verify emails and phone numbers, instead of relying on one source

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  Intent signals: AI agents detect hiring changes, funding rounds, tech stack shifts, and website visits, then auto-add leads to campaigns with messaging matched to the signal

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  Deliverability Hub: monitor inbox placement, warm up inboxes with lemwarm, and get alerts before problems erode your reply rates

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  Unified inbox: all replies from every channel and sending account appear in one thread per lead

What stays behind in Hunter

Hunter Sequences does not support native A/B testing, but it also doesn’t support exporting your sequence templates as reusable files. Your campaign reporting history, domain search saved results, and browser extension settings all stay in Hunter. lemlist replaces domain search with its own lead database and Chrome extension, so you won’t lose the function, just the historical data.

Pre-migration checklist

Four steps, done in order, will prevent data loss and deliverability damage during the switch.

1. Audit your Hunter account and tag active leads

Open Hunter’s Leads section and separate actively contacted leads from stale contacts. Tag or segment them so you know which lists to import first. Importing every lead you’ve ever saved into lemlist just clutters your workspace.

2. Set up your lemlist account and sending domains

Create your lemlist workspace and connect (or purchase) your sending domains. lemlist auto-configures DNS authentication records, which saves you the usual back-and-forth with your domain provider.

3. Start lemwarm on new inboxes before launching campaigns

Warm-up runs in two phases: roughly 2–3 weeks of ramp-up to reach your target volume, then 2 weeks of stabilization with no spam, so about one month in total (see lemlist’s guide to setting up lemwarm and warming your inbox). Only begin outreach once your Warmup Score reaches 90+, lemwarm shows no spam, and your inbox rate has stayed above 90% for 14 straight days.

If you’re connecting existing domains that already have warm sender reputation, the timeline shrinks. But for new sending domains, plan for this window before you launch any campaign.

4. Connect your CRM before importing leads

If you sync Hunter with HubSpot or Salesforce, connect lemlist to that same CRM first. Verify the CRM integration is enabled in lemlist Settings → Integrations → HubSpot, and create custom fields in HubSpot under Contacts before importing from CSV or API sources, because lemlist can only map fields that exist in HubSpot (see how to troubleshoot lemlist–HubSpot sync issues). This prevents duplicate records during the parallel-run period.

Step-by-step migration from Hunter to lemlist

With your checklist complete, here’s the actual export-import process.

1. Export leads and companies from Hunter as CSV

In Hunter, go to your Leads section, select the list you want to export, and click “Export as CSV.” Export itself costs 0 credits. The export will include only the recipients matching your active filters, and each recipient’s custom attributes are included as columns in the file.

2. Clean and format the CSV for lemlist’s variable structure

lemlist auto-maps standard variables: email (required), firstname, lastname, companyName, companyDomain, linkedinUrl, phone, picture, and icebreaker (see lemlist’s guide on how to import leads from a CSV file). Your Hunter CSV column headers likely won’t match those names exactly, so rename them before uploading.

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  Rename columns so they match lemlist’s variable syntax (e.g., “First Name” becomes “firstname”)

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  Remove duplicates by email address

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  Delete rows with missing or invalid email addresses

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  Keep custom columns like tags or notes, since lemlist will import them as custom variables

The first row of your CSV has to be column names, not data. If your first row contains an actual email address, lemlist treats it as a column name and skips that lead.

3. Import the CSV into lemlist and map your columns

During the “Set up imported custom variables” step, assign each CSV column to the correct lemlist variable type. This is what makes lemlist recognize fields like {{email}} and {{linkedinUrl}} in your campaign steps, as explained in choosing the right CSV import type. The interface walks you through it with dropdown selectors per column.

4. Enrich imported leads with waterfall verification

After import, run lemlist’s built-in email verification and phone finder on your imported contacts. Hunter may have verified those emails weeks or months ago, and email addresses decay. lemlist’s waterfall enrichment queries 14+ providers, so it also catches phone numbers that Hunter doesn’t supply at all.

5. Verify data integrity and test personalization

Pick 10–20 imported leads at random. Open them in lemlist and check that first names, company names, and custom variables populated correctly. Then preview a test campaign to confirm your personalization tags render real data, not blank fields or broken syntax.

How to protect deliverability during the switch

Switching cold email tools is the highest-risk moment for deliverability. You’re introducing new sending infrastructure, and inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook are watching for sudden shifts in behavior.

Lemwarm sends automated emails from your mailbox to other inboxes in its network, and those emails get opened and replied to like normal conversation. Gmail and Outlook read that activity as human behavior, and over a few weeks they start trusting your domain enough to put your emails in the primary inbox.

While warm-up is running, use lemlist’s Deliverability Hub to test whether emails land in primary, promotions, or spam before you launch a real campaign. The Hub also sends automated alerts if bounce rates spike or spam placement increases, so you catch problems before they compound.

Migration risks and how to avoid them

Even a well-planned migration has failure points. Here are the ones that trip teams up most often:

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  Sending from cold inboxes too soon: Keep lemlist at 0 during warm-up. No cold sending while the mailbox is ramping up or stabilizing (see how to set up and use lemwarm). Wait until your deliverability score holds above 90 for two straight weeks.

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  Importing unverified or outdated contacts: Re-verify every imported email through lemlist’s waterfall verification. Don’t trust Hunter’s last check date if it’s older than 60 days.

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  Losing campaign sequence logic: Hunter sequences support an initial email plus up to 5 follow-ups, each with 1- to 30-day configurable delays. Those sequences don’t export as templates. Rebuild them in lemlist and use this as a chance to add LinkedIn and call steps.

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  Breaking CRM sync during the cutover: Run both tools in parallel and confirm CRM records update correctly from lemlist before disconnecting Hunter.

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  Going dark on outbound for days: Pipeline doesn’t pause while you migrate. Keep active Hunter campaigns running until their sequences finish, and launch new campaigns only in lemlist.

Running Hunter and lemlist in parallel during the transition

A hard cutover is rarely the right call. Instead, keep Hunter active for one to two billing cycles while you ramp lemlist.

The logic is straightforward: let existing Hunter sequences finish sending. Start all new campaigns in lemlist only. Compare deliverability metrics (open rates, bounce rates, inbox placement) side by side. Once lemlist campaigns match or beat your Hunter baselines, cancel Hunter.

This overlap also gives your team time to learn lemlist’s interface without the pressure of a full migration day. The in-app chat and dashboard guides help, but there’s no substitute for actually building and launching a campaign or two before going all-in.

How to rebuild your first campaign in lemlist after migrating

Your first lemlist campaign isn’t a blank slate. It’s a direct replacement for what worked in Hunter, upgraded with new channels.

Start by creating a multichannel sequence. Add your opening email, then layer in a LinkedIn profile visit on day 2, a connection request on day 4, and a follow-up email on day 6. You can set conditions so that if a lead opens your email but doesn’t reply, lemlist triggers the LinkedIn step automatically.

If you have existing email copy from Hunter that performed well, paste it into lemlist’s AI Campaign Generator. The AI adapts it into a full multichannel sequence with personalized intros and follow-ups based on your goal and audience description.

Finally, confirm that your HubSpot or Salesforce sync is active so replies, opens, and calls log automatically. With the unified inbox, all channel replies appear in one thread per lead, which means you won’t need to check separate tools to see who’s responded.