Migration Reference
Insightly to HubSpot Migration
What actually transfers, what quietly does not, and what has to be rebuilt by hand.
We mapped Insightly against HubSpot feature by feature: 52 features, 5 synced objects, 8 documented traps and 30 items that have to be rebuilt. The whole map is on this page, ungated.
The PDF is the same reference, formatted for a procurement file.
Get The Reference And The Calculator
The full Insightly to HubSpot reference as a PDF, plus the Excel calculator we scope these migrations with: every one of the 52 features as a row, enter your counts, get hours.
Three files: the reference as a PDF, the same reference in Markdown for your AI tool, and the full Excel effort calculator.
Insightly to HubSpot is a medium migration, typically 3-6 weeks. Of the 52 features we mapped, 40 carry across as they are and 12 land with something lost: the 30 items nothing moves for you is what will actually set your timeline, not the sync.
Migration Scorecard
- Migration complexity
- Medium
- Typical timeline
- 3-6 weeks
- Recommended method
- Sync then migrate
- Native sync
- Data sync, two way
- Smart transfer
- Not supported
- HubSpot subscription
- Free for default mappings. Data Hub Starter or higher required for custom field mappings.
Feature parity across 52 capabilities
- Maps directly: 40 (77%)
- Maps partially: 12 (23%)
- No equivalent: 0 (0%)
5
Objects synced natively
8
Limitations and traps
30
Manual rebuild items
3
Source editions covered
Where this comes from: Our own research corpus, verified 2026-08-01, behind every number on this page.
The Five Objects That Sync Natively
What the connector moves for you, and which way each one flows.
Contacts
Two wayBecomes Contacts
Contact records match on email address above everything else, which is worth knowing before the first sync runs: any record that has never carried a valid email is a record with no reliable way to land in HubSpot at all.
Organizations
Two wayBecomes Companies
Companies match on name and domain together, a pairing worth checking rather than assuming for a group where several operating entities can sit behind one shared domain.
Opportunities
Two wayBecomes Deals
A deal will not keep its associations unless a contact or a company syncs alongside it, and once that condition is met the sync covers every pipeline and stage without exception. Where an engagement runs a separate pipeline for delivery against the pipeline for sales, both need this rule respected before the two are trusted to connect.
Leads
Two wayBecomes Contacts
Insightly Leads and Insightly Contacts both end up as HubSpot Contacts, but through two separate mappings, not one: the Leads path is listed as a shared object on the app's HubSpot marketplace listing (read 2026-07-31), carrying 16 default field mappings of its own.
Custom Object
Two wayBecomes Custom Object
Custom objects do sync, Insightly's to HubSpot's own, but only where HubSpot Enterprise is already in place; the object is listed as shared on the app's HubSpot marketplace listing (read 2026-07-31), with no default field mappings published for it, so every field is a mapping decision made by hand rather than one inherited from a template.
Eight Things the Sync Does Not Tell You
Each one is documented, and each one has ended a migration in a bad week.
Activities and Engagements Do Not Sync Natively
Every note, task, email, call and meeting logged in Insightly stays in Insightly when the native data sync runs: none of that activity history crosses to HubSpot, and a standard import will not pick up the gap either, since HubSpot's own import path does not accept engagements at all.
Workaround: Recovering that activity history means an API-based migration or a third-party tool such as Trujay or MigrateMyCRM: budget for one of the two rather than assuming a standard import will carry across the record of what was actually said and done.
Attachments Require Separate Migration
Whatever sits attached to an Insightly record, a signed contract, a trade licence copy, a drawing set, stays behind when the native data sync runs: file attachments need a migration step of their own.
Workaround: Pull the attachments out of Insightly and bring them back in against the new HubSpot records, either through the API or a manual import; either route works, but neither happens on its own.
Custom Field Mappings Require Data Hub Starter
The default field mappings cost nothing, but the moment you want to edit one or add a mapping of your own, Data Hub Starter or a higher tier becomes a requirement rather than an option.
Workaround: Data Hub Starter at $20 a month is what buys custom mapping capability; put it in the original budget request rather than discovering the line item once the mapping screen is already open.
Some Field Types Only Sync One-way as Text
A dropdown select property does not always sync in both directions: in some cases it only maps one way, landing in the other system as plain text rather than a matching option. Address properties carry the same risk, for the more mundane reason that the two systems format an address differently.
Workaround: Go through the field mapping screen line by line rather than accepting the defaults, and update by hand whichever fields will not sync in both directions.
Custom Objects Require Enterprise Tier and Separate Configuration
Custom objects will not sync between Insightly and HubSpot at all without HubSpot Enterprise and configuration built specifically for them, and even then not every custom object type is guaranteed support: worth confirming directly before a milestone-billed engagement gets modelled as a custom object and only then found not to carry across.
Workaround: Either run on HubSpot Enterprise with custom object sync switched on, or move the custom object data across by CSV or API instead: the second route is the one to plan for if the Enterprise tier is not already decided.
Activity Data Split From Main Records Loses Associations
Run the main records through the native sync and the activities through a separate third-party tool, and the two arrive with no relationship between them: an activity migrated this way does not attach back to the record it belongs to.
Workaround: Keep the associations intact by moving records and their activities through one tool and one method together, rather than splitting the work between the native sync and a separate migration pass.
Email Address Required for Contact Matching
Email address is what HubSpot's data sync uses to tell one contact from another, so a contact with no valid email, or an outdated one, is a contact the sync may fail to match correctly, or not sync at all.
Workaround: Check every contact has a valid email address before the sync runs, and route whichever records genuinely have none through a CSV import instead.
Insightly Projects Do Not Have a Direct HubSpot Equivalent
Insightly's Projects module is where the work after the sale actually gets tracked, and HubSpot CRM has no object built to match it directly: a delivery record has to be mapped onto deals, tickets or a custom object instead of arriving as itself. For a consultancy, an engineering practice or a contractor where the project record and the sales record have always been the same record, that gap is the one to settle before anything else, since the answer decides how much of this migration is really a rebuild.
Workaround: Choose the mapping against how delivery is actually run: HubSpot tickets, a purpose-built custom object, or a secondary deal pipeline can each hold it, and the right one depends on whether what matters most is tracking status, structured data, or revenue against a milestone.
One Thing a Migration Does Not Rebuild
This is Insightly's own code or product, and a HubSpot migration will not carry it across: it carries no hours in the estimate. It still needs a decision before cutover, because you are the one giving something up.
AppConnect (Integration Platform)
Every integration built through AppConnect needs individual evaluation before it can be replaced: some of what it connects to already has a native HubSpot integration standing ready, and the rest needs Zapier or Make to rebuild the connection from scratch.
The 30 Items That Get Rebuilt by Hand
This is the list that separates a quote that holds from one that does not.
Data And Objects
Notes and Comments
Whatever was typed as a free-text note or added as a threaded comment on an Insightly record.
HubSpot: Notes on the record timeline
The native integration has no path for any of it, so recovering it means an API extraction run once the records themselves have already landed in HubSpot, not before.
Task History and Assignments
Every task Insightly is holding, open or completed, together with who owns it and when it was due.
HubSpot: Tasks
The open tasks are worth importing at minimum; completed task history rarely earns its cost, though that is worth confirming with whoever actually relies on it rather than deciding on assumption alone.
Email Correspondence History
The email threads that have been logged against an Insightly record over time.
HubSpot: Logged email on the timeline
Reconnecting the mailbox to HubSpot recovers the recent threads on its own, and does it more cheaply than pulling the full archive out by extraction; save the extraction for whatever correspondence genuinely predates the reconnect.
Call Logs and Meeting Records
Every call and meeting Insightly has logged, outcome included.
HubSpot: Calls and meetings on the timeline
Each activity's owner has to resolve to an actual HubSpot user at the point of import, or the call or meeting arrives attributed to nobody at all.
File Attachments
Every document sitting attached to an Insightly record, contracts and drawings among them.
HubSpot: Attachments on records
Getting them across means pulling them through the API and re-attaching each one to its record only once that record already exists in HubSpot, a second pass rather than something the main migration does in one go.
Insightly Projects
The records Insightly keeps for everything that happens after a deal closes: the actual delivery of the work.
HubSpot: A delivery pipeline and tasks, or an external project tool
Nothing in HubSpot matches this directly, so the real decision is not a mapping exercise but a scoping one: whether delivery belongs inside HubSpot at all. For a consultancy, an engineering practice or a contractor running long, milestone-billed engagements where the project record and the sales record have always been the same record, that single question changes the size of this project more than anything else on this page, and it is worth settling before a field is mapped.
Custom Object Data
Whatever data lives inside Insightly's own custom objects.
HubSpot: Custom objects
Custom objects are gated by plan on both sides of this migration, so confirm what tier you are actually buying into before the mapping is designed: get that wrong and the data has nowhere to go but collapsed into ordinary properties instead.
Record Relationships Beyond the Primary Association
Any link Insightly holds between two records beyond the one primary association.
HubSpot: Secondary associations with labels
Association labels themselves are gated by plan, and without them only the primary relationship makes the crossing: confirm which tier you hold before the import is designed, not after the secondary links have already failed to appear.
Automation
Workflow Automation Rules
The trigger-and-action rules Insightly runs the moment something on a record changes.
HubSpot: Workflows
None of it exists to rebuild against until the pipelines and properties are already there in HubSpot, so sequence the rebuild after that foundation, rule by rule rather than all at once.
Activity Sets
A named set of tasks Insightly can drop onto a record in a single action, rather than adding each task by hand.
HubSpot: Workflow task actions in sequence
HubSpot's version of that chain is a workflow built with delays between steps, and the offsets between one task's due date and the next are exactly the detail most likely to go missing in the rebuild unless someone checks for it deliberately.
Email Notification Rules
The rule deciding who is notified the moment a record changes.
HubSpot: Notification settings and workflow internal emails
HubSpot spreads this across two separate settings rather than keeping it in one place, which is exactly how a rebuild ends up covering only half the rule; check both before calling it done.
Lead Assignment Rules
The logic that decides which owner a new lead lands with.
HubSpot: Workflow rotation actions
Users and teams have to exist in HubSpot before this rule can route anything, and once it is built, test the distribution against real records rather than trusting the logic on paper alone.
Pipeline Stage Automation Triggers
Whatever Insightly triggers the moment an opportunity moves to a new stage.
HubSpot: Deal stage workflow enrolment
Build the stages first: a workflow's enrolment criteria has nothing to point at until the pipeline stages it depends on already exist in HubSpot.
Reporting
Custom Reports and Saved Filters
Every saved report Insightly holds, filters included.
HubSpot: Custom reports and saved views
Start the rebuild from the question each report was actually answering, not from reproducing its old layout in HubSpot.
Dashboard Configurations
Whatever dashboard layouts have been saved in Insightly.
HubSpot: Dashboards
Leave the dashboards until after the reports underneath them exist in HubSpot, rather than building the two together.
Opportunity Reports and Pipeline Analytics
Whatever pipeline and forecast reporting Insightly was running.
HubSpot: Deal reports and forecasting
This is a configuration job before it is ever a reporting one: get the amount, close date and stage probability set deliberately on every deal first, since a forecast built on defaults reports nothing worth trusting.
Activity and Productivity Reports
Reporting on what each individual user has actually been doing.
HubSpot: Activity reports
This reporting restarts from zero at migration unless the activity history itself was extracted first, the expensive item covered above, so decide on that extraction before assuming the reporting will simply continue.
Sales And Marketing Config
Lead Scoring Criteria
Whatever logic Insightly was using to rank an incoming lead.
HubSpot: Score properties
This gets built again from nothing, against whichever signals HubSpot itself actually records, rather than ported from Insightly's own logic.
Email Templates
Every reusable message template built up in Insightly.
HubSpot: Email templates and snippets
Every one of these gets rebuilt by hand, and the token names inside them change in the move, so a straight copy and paste will not render correctly.
Pipeline Stages and Configuration
The opportunity pipelines and stages Insightly was running.
HubSpot: Deal pipelines and stages
Build this before anything else on the list: every downstream piece of the migration depends on it being right first.
Web-to-lead Forms
Whatever forms were capturing a lead straight into Insightly.
HubSpot: Forms
Swap every website embed at the moment of cutover, or new leads keep arriving in a system nobody is watching any more.
Sales Sequences and Cadences
The multi-touch follow-up sequences reps were running by hand.
HubSpot: Sequences
HubSpot enrols sequences per rep and per mailbox rather than at the account level, and the sending limits attached to each differ from what Insightly allowed, both worth checking before a rollout is promised.
Users And Permissions
User Roles and Permissions
Every login Insightly holds, together with its access level.
HubSpot: Users and permission sets
Create every user in HubSpot before the import runs, or record ownership has nothing to resolve to.
Team and Territory Assignments
How Insightly grouped its users, and which territory each group was responsible for.
HubSpot: Teams and territory properties
A single Insightly setting splits into two separate HubSpot concepts on the other side, since HubSpot has no territory object of its own: decide which parts are genuinely a team and which are genuinely a territory before building either one.
Record Visibility Rules
The rule deciding who is allowed to see which records.
HubSpot: Record access settings
Confirm what genuinely still needs to stay hidden before old restrictions are reproduced wholesale in the new system; a rule nobody remembers the reason for is not a rule worth rebuilding.
Field-level Permissions
The per-profile control Insightly offered over individual fields.
HubSpot: Permission sets
HubSpot's control at field level is less granular than Insightly's, so for whichever field is genuinely sensitive, confirm the control actually exists in HubSpot before promising it will.
Integrations
Third-party App Connections
Whatever is already connected to Insightly, Mailchimp and QuickBooks among the common ones.
HubSpot: App Marketplace integrations
A Mailchimp connection specifically is worth questioning before it is simply reconnected: once HubSpot is in place its own marketing tools may make the separate subscription redundant rather than something to carry forward.
AppConnect Automations
AppConnect, Insightly's own integration platform, and whatever flows have been built inside it over time.
HubSpot: Workflows, marketplace apps, or an external automation tool
Treat this as a platform to inventory rather than a single connector to replace: each flow built inside it may need a different home in HubSpot, so list every one of them before the scope is set, not after.
Calendar Sync
The Google or Microsoft calendar connection each user has linked to Insightly.
HubSpot: Calendar integration and the meetings tool
This gets set up once for every user individually, not once for the whole account, so budget the time accordingly.
Custom API Integrations
Any bespoke code that was written directly against the Insightly API.
HubSpot: HubSpot APIs
That code has to be rewritten against a genuinely different object model, so scope the work from the code itself rather than from someone's description of what it does.
The Sequence
Sync First, Then Migrate
Order is the content here. These steps form a dependency chain, and running them out of sequence is a documented way this kind of migration fails.
- 1
Audit
identify every active record, custom field, pipeline and integration Insightly is actually holding before anything is planned around it
- 2
Clean the Data
deduplicate contacts, clear out inactive records and verify email addresses, since the sync itself depends on that last one
- 3
Set up HubSpot First
create the custom properties, configure the pipelines and set the deal stages before a single record is allowed to land
- 4
Install the HubSpot Data Sync App for Insightly, Which Is What Actually Carries Contacts, Companies and Deals Across
Install the HubSpot Data Sync app for Insightly, which is what actually carries contacts, companies and deals across
- 5
Configure the Field Mappings, Keeping in Mind That Anything Beyond the Defaults Needs Data Hub Starter to Even Be Available
Configure the field mappings, keeping in mind that anything beyond the defaults needs Data Hub Starter to even be available
- 6
Run the Initial Sync, Then Verify the Data Landed Accurately Rather Than Assuming It Did
Run the initial sync, then verify the data landed accurately rather than assuming it did
- 7
Migrate Activities, Notes and Attachments Separately, by API or a Third-party Migration Tool, Since None of It Travels With the Native Sync
Migrate activities, notes and attachments separately, by API or a third-party migration tool, since none of it travels with the native sync
- 8
Rebuild the Workflows, Automation Rules and Email Templates Directly in HubSpot, None of Which Carried Across on Their Own
Rebuild the workflows, automation rules and email templates directly in HubSpot, none of which carried across on their own
- 9
Recreate the Reports and Dashboards in HubSpot, Starting From the Question Each One Used to Answer
Recreate the reports and dashboards in HubSpot, starting from the question each one used to answer
- 10
Train the Team on HubSpot Properly, Keep Both Systems Running in Parallel for a Short Overlap, Then Cut Over
Train the team on HubSpot properly, keep both systems running in parallel for a short overlap, then cut over
Typically 3-6 weeks end to end, depending on how much of the source configuration is actually in use.
Effort Estimator
How Big Is This Migration?
A handful of questions, no sign-up required. The ranges come from the research above: every feature we mapped carries an effort figure, and this totals the ones that apply to your instance.
Estimated Effort
Answer a couple of questions and an hours range appears here.
Built from our research on 52 Insightly features. It is a range, not a quote.
A planning range, not a quote. It is delivery effort only, with no project management line. What moves it most in practice is data quality.
What Goes Wrong Most Often
The failures that show up again and again, in roughly the order they bite.
Insightly Projects Do Have Somewhere to Land
the HubSpot projects object takes the project itself, and milestones take the pipeline stages beneath it. The open question is not where these go but what happens to the budgets and dated milestones riding on them, which matters directly wherever an engagement is billed against those same milestones rather than closed in a single instalment
Move the Activity Data on a Separate Track From the Records It Belongs To, and the Association Between the Two Does Not Survive the Trip
Move the activity data on a separate track from the records it belongs to, and the association between the two does not survive the trip
A CSV Cannot Carry Notes or Activities Into HubSpot on Its Own; Only the API or a Third-party Tool Actually Does That Job
A CSV cannot carry notes or activities into HubSpot on its own; only the API or a third-party tool actually does that job
Forwarding Insightly's Email History Into HubSpot Is Not the Simple Step It Sounds Like
Forwarding Insightly's email history into HubSpot is not the simple step it sounds like
A CSV-based Migration Can Lose the Original Timestamp on a Record Altogether
A CSV-based migration can lose the original timestamp on a record altogether
Insightly's Tags Have No Direct Counterpart, So Each One Needs a Deliberate Decision
map it to a HubSpot property, or to a list, but not leave it unmapped
Questions
Insightly To HubSpot, Answered
Yes. Data sync, two way, covering 5 objects. What it will not do is rebuild your configuration: that is the 30 items below.
Typically 3-6 weeks. Complexity is driven by automation and reporting depth, not by record count: the connector moves records, so a large database on its own will not extend the timeline.
Of 52 features we mapped, 40 (77%) carry across directly and 12 (23%) map partially, meaning something is lost or reshaped along the way. 0 have no HubSpot equivalent at any tier, worth raising before sign-off rather than after.
30 items have to be rebuilt by hand, and 8 documented limitations are not surfaced by the connector at all. Both lists are on this page, in full, for whoever is scoping the work.
Free for default mappings. Data Hub Starter or higher required for custom field mappings.
No. 1 item on this page is Insightly's own code or product, which a HubSpot migration does not port and which carries no hours in any estimate you are given. It still needs a decision before cutover, because you are the one giving something up.
Only in one direction. The sync is not bidirectional here, so running both systems means choosing a system of record up front and accepting drift in the other.
Ready to Get Started?
Plan Your Migration
Tell us which platform you are leaving, how much of it is custom, and when you need to be live in HubSpot. We will tell you what transfers directly, what needs rebuilding, and how long the move actually takes.