How to move from HubSpot Sales Hub to lemlist (step by step)

Why sales teams move outbound out of HubSpot Sales Hub

Moving outbound from HubSpot Sales Hub to a dedicated sales engagement platform typically means separating your prospecting execution from your CRM. HubSpot stays as your system of record for deals, pipeline, and reporting. A platform like lemlist takes over the outbound layer: building contact lists, running multichannel campaigns, and managing deliverability.

HubSpot’s sequence enrollment is manual and capped at 50 contacts at a time, even on Enterprise, which makes large-scale prospecting impractical without daily manual effort. That cap alone pushes teams toward specialized tools once outbound becomes a serious revenue channel.

Here’s where the friction usually shows up:

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  Single-channel sequences: HubSpot is email-centric, lacking native automation for LinkedIn and cold calling needed for a modern multichannel sales strategy. You can add call and LinkedIn tasks to a sequence, but they’re reminders for reps, not automated steps.

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  Sending limits that stack: Sequences are capped per seat: 500/day on Sales Hub Professional, 1,000/day on Enterprise. On top of that, three separate limits stack on every rep email: HubSpot’s per-inbox 1:1 cap, the Sequences cap, and the cap your email provider (Google or Microsoft) enforces.

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  No built-in warm-up or inbox rotation: Sales Hub sequences lack the inbox rotation, warm-up, and deliverability infrastructure of dedicated cold outreach tools. Teams sending at volume across multiple mailboxes have to manage reputation outside HubSpot.

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  No native lead database: Finding contacts, verifying emails, and sourcing phone numbers all require separate tools and separate budgets when you’re running outbound from HubSpot alone.

These aren’t flaws in HubSpot. They’re design boundaries. HubSpot is a CRM with sales engagement built in. lemlist is the opposite: an outbound execution platform with CRM integration built in.

What to decide before you start the migration

You might be wondering whether this is a full CRM replacement. Usually, it isn’t.

Most teams keep HubSpot as their CRM and use lemlist as the outbound execution layer connected via the native integration. The integration syncs contacts, logs campaign activity back to HubSpot timelines, and preserves field ownership. This hybrid setup is the most common post-migration architecture we see: HubSpot for deals, reporting, and marketing; lemlist for prospecting, multichannel outreach, and deliverability.

A full replacement only makes sense if your team was using HubSpot exclusively for outbound sequences and has no dependency on its CRM, marketing, or service features.

Before touching any data, you also want to audit what you’re bringing over. Organizations that run a proper audit often find that a large share of records are duplicates, outdated, or missing required fields. Migrating dirty data into a new platform moves the problem. It doesn’t fix it.

Finally, look at active sequences. If HubSpot sequences are still running when lemlist campaigns launch, prospects can receive messages from both platforms in the same week. Set a hard cutoff date, let active sequences finish or pause them, and create a buffer window before the first lemlist send goes out.

Which HubSpot Sales Hub features lemlist replaces (and which stay)

Here’s a practical mapping of what moves and what doesn’t:

The most important row is the CRM line. lemlist doesn’t replace your CRM. It connects to it. Campaign activity from lemlist (sends, opens, replies, calls) syncs back to HubSpot contact records so your reps and managers keep full visibility where they already work.

Step-by-step migration from HubSpot Sales Hub to lemlist

1. Connect lemlist to HubSpot via the native integration

Start here, before you import anything. The HubSpot integration syncs contacts and companies between platforms and logs activities in HubSpot automatically (see lemlist’s HubSpot integration setup guide). Connecting it first means you can pull contacts directly and skip CSV headaches for ongoing operations.

If you skip field mapping or do it too late, your data may not appear in HubSpot correctly, values may sync into the wrong property, and sync errors can occur. Field mapping is not retroactive in V1, so fields mapped after contacts are imported will not backfill existing records. Get this right before any contacts move.

2. Export your contacts and map fields

Export your outbound contact lists from HubSpot as a CSV (active lists, filtered views, or static lists). Then import into lemlist and map every HubSpot property you use in outreach (First Name, Company, Job Title, custom properties) to its corresponding lemlist variable.

Field mapping ensures data stays synchronized between HubSpot and lemlist automatically, so the right value is available where you need it without manual updates in both systems. For the details, see lemlist’s guide to mapping HubSpot fields.

3. Rebuild your outbound sequences as multichannel campaigns

HubSpot sequences don’t export as templates. You’ll recreate your outreach flows in lemlist, which is also your opportunity to upgrade from email-only to multichannel. Take your best-performing HubSpot sequence and rebuild it with added LinkedIn, calling, or SMS steps.

lemAgent (lemlist’s AI assistant) can generate campaign structures from a plain-language description of your goals and ICP, which speeds this step up considerably.

4. Set up your deliverability infrastructure

This is the step most teams underestimate.

New sending domains and mailboxes have no reputation with inbox providers. 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 lemwarm setup guide). 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.

In lemlist, you can connect an existing domain or buy a new one directly in the platform. Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC records) is configured automatically. Then activate lemwarm, which exchanges real emails across a network of more than 10,000 real accounts and generates human-like content for each message to build genuine sender reputation.

5. Run a test campaign before going live

Send to a controlled group of 50–100 contacts. Confirm four things:

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  Personalization variables render correctly (no blank names or garbled fields)

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  Inbox placement is healthy (check Deliverability Hub for inbox vs. spam ratios)

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  The HubSpot sync is logging activity back to contact timelines

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  Replies arrive in the lemlist unified inbox

Fix any issues on a small batch before rolling out to your full pipeline.

5 migration risks that stall outbound pipelines

The biggest threats are dropping active prospects out of live sequences, damaging your sending domain reputation, and leaving reps without a workflow during the cutover. Here are the specific failure modes to watch for:

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  Incomplete field mapping: Silent field mapping errors happen when data transfers cleanly but ends up in the wrong property, and no error fires to alert you. Test with a small batch first.

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  Deliverability drop on day one: Sending at full volume from a new mailbox with zero reputation triggers spam filters immediately. Allow the full warm-up period before scaling.

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  Sequence overlap: If HubSpot sequences aren’t paused before lemlist campaigns start, you double-contact prospects. Use a hard cutoff date with a buffer window.

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  Lost engagement history: Past opens, clicks, and replies in HubSpot don’t transfer into lemlist. Keep HubSpot as your historical record. The native integration syncs all new activity going forward.

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  Rep adoption friction: User resistance reduces adoption of the new system, and research shows change resistance impacts over 40 percent of digital transformation projects. Start with one team, run a training session, and expand once the workflow is validated.

Post-migration checklist

Use this in your first week after cutover:

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  [ ] Spot-check 10 HubSpot contact timelines for synced lemlist activity

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  [ ] Verify that field mapping imported correctly (no blank names, no mismatched phone formats)

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  [ ] Confirm lemwarm score is 90+ and inbox placement is healthy in Deliverability Hub

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  [ ] Send a test campaign to a controlled group and review personalization, tracking, and reply routing

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  [ ] Run a team walkthrough covering campaign launch, unified inbox, analytics, and where to flag issues

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  [ ] Assign one team member as the lemlist admin for the first 30 days

Field mapping drifts quietly: someone renames a HubSpot property six months in, and the sync keeps writing to a dead field with no error thrown. Build a monthly sync check into your RevOps calendar.

Over to you

The move from HubSpot Sales Hub to lemlist is an outbound infrastructure upgrade. HubSpot stays as your CRM. lemlist takes over prospecting, multichannel execution, and deliverability. The biggest risks (deliverability drops, field mapping errors, sequence overlap) are all preventable with the planning steps above.