Migrating From HubSpot to WordPress

How to get your ducks in a row

A high level look at what it takes to move off of HubSpot.

I've guided plenty of businesses through this exact move, and what follows is shaped by what I've seen work, and what tends to trip people up. Even so, no two websites are exactly alike, and the best path forward for your migration will also be unique to your organization. The information below is not a detailed checklist. It may spark ideas and start good conversations along the way.

Move it or lose it?

This is an ideal time to take a good hard look at your website. As a group (leadership, sales, marketing, support, etc.) it's helpful to talk through what's working for you and what's not. Are you also considering updating:

• The look and feel of the website
• The brand voice / content
• Content organization
• Marketing materials
• Outdated pages or posts

Factor in your timeline and your budget. As a rough range, a straightforward move might take a few weeks, while a site with a lot of custom functionality can take a few months. You can move your content over as is, but if you're making significant changes, the higher up front cost of the migration may still end up saving you money in the long run.

If it would help to have an outside perspective on any of this, I'm happy to take a look at what you have and share some recommendations before you commit to a direction.

Migration Audit

When migrating from HubSpot to WordPress, you need to account for HubSpot's built in capabilities. Focus on the ones that matter most to your business. Your migration strategy is crucial.

Take Inventory

Before touching anything, get a complete picture of what's live today. Pull together:

• Backup: Export a full backup of your current HubSpot content before you touch anything. It's your fallback if something goes wrong along the way.
• Page URLs: Export a sitemap of everything published. Include site pages, landing pages, and blog posts.
• PPC Campaigns: If any of those URLs are changing, check your Google Ads and other paid campaigns for links pointing to them. Document which ad destinations will need to be updated once the new site is live.
• Assets: Images, PDFs, videos, and any other downloadable files.
• Forms: Every form on the site, and where those submissions currently go.
• HubDB tables: Any dynamic tables and the templates that pull data from them.

Map Technical Replacements

HubSpot bundles a lot of functionality. Forms, workflows, SEO tools, and personalization are all built in. WordPress doesn't include these by default. For each HubSpot feature your site depends on, find the plugin or outside tool that will replace it. Forms, for example, are commonly rebuilt with a plugin like Gravity Forms or WPForms. Test it before you rely on it in production.

CRM

First, decide whether to keep HubSpot active (perhaps on a lower tier) using the official WordPress plugin or migrate your database to a new platform like Salesforce. Because this choice impacts your forms, workflows, and daily sales operations, it deserves early consideration. Fortunately, you do not have to move everything at once. Many organizations migrate their main website, blog, and knowledge base to WordPress first, while intentionally leaving landing pages and forms in HubSpot. This phased approach is ideal if a major CRM decision is not yet finalized, allowing you to transition your content without rushing your long-term software strategy.

Environment Setup

Hosting

Choose a WordPress host that fits your traffic, budget, and support needs. Look for one built for WordPress. It should include staging environments, automatic backups, and caching. That way you aren't adding those tools later.

Staging

Build and test your new site in a staging environment before going live so your current HubSpot site can run uninterrupted. This gives your team a safe venue to catch problems before your visitors do. When setting up this environment, coordinate with your new host to address potential URL changes:

• Same Domain: Staging will use a temporary URL, requiring a simple DNS switch on launch day.
• New TLD or Subdomain: The staging environment must be used to test new URL architectures, database link rewrites, and 301 redirect rules to protect your SEO before deployment.

Domains and Subdomains

If you're keeping landing pages in HubSpot during a phased migration, plan for more than one address. A domain or subdomain can only point to one place at a time, so each piece of your setup needs its own home:

• Website: Your root domain, like yourdomain.com or www.yourdomain.com, points to your new WordPress host.
• Landing Pages: This only applies if you're keeping landing pages in HubSpot while your root domain moves to WordPress. In that case, connect a separate subdomain, like pages.yourdomain.com, to HubSpot. This keeps those pages working as they are. If your landing pages are moving to WordPress too, you can skip this step.
• Email: Your email sending domain should already be its own subdomain, verified with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records. HubSpot won't authenticate a sending domain that's also hosting a website, so this piece is often untouched by the migration as long as those DNS records stay in place.
• Forms: Forms are not landing pages, so they don't need a subdomain of their own. A HubSpot form is just an embed, and it works on any page, on any domain, including your new WordPress pages. Just add your WordPress domain to HubSpot's list of allowed domains under Forms settings, so submissions land in your CRM instead of getting flagged as spam.

If your blog is moving to WordPress too, HubSpot's RSS to email tool can still send your subscription emails. Just point it at your new blog's feed instead of the old one. A couple of things to expect: featured images won't pull in automatically unless they're added to the feed's description, and the tool only works with one feed at a time.

Theme / Design

Decide whether you want to recreate your HubSpot design in WordPress. Or use the migration as a chance to refresh it. Either way, your new theme needs to support every template and layout your content depends on.

Moving your data and content

Website and Blog Content

Move your pages and blog posts over. Bring the content, images, internal links, and metadata with them. Keep a record of each page's old URL alongside its new one. You'll use that map to set up redirects when you go live, so your search rankings and existing links stay intact.

Media Assets

Download every image, PDF, and video from HubSpot's file manager. Upload them again to your WordPress media library. Check that file names and alt text carry over. Both matter for SEO and accessibility.

Forms

Go through the form list from your audit. For each one, decide whether to rebuild it natively in WordPress or keep it as a HubSpot embed on its new page. Either way, test it before you go live. Confirm that submissions arrive where they should, confirmation emails send, and any workflows tied to that form still fire.

Lists and Workflows

Review your HubSpot lists, workflows, and automations. Many of these are triggered by form submissions, so revisit your list of forms as you go. Decide which ones need to be rebuilt in your new CRM or marketing tool. Not everything is worth automating again right away. This is a good time to simplify.