Moving From WordPress to HubSpot

How to move without hauling the clutter with you

A high level look at what it takes to move your website from WordPress to HubSpot.

I've helped plenty of businesses make this exact move, and what follows is shaped by what I've seen work, and what tends to get left behind by accident. Even so, no two websites are exactly alike, and the best path forward for your move 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.

What's Coming With You?

Moving is a good excuse to take stock of what you actually need. 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• Outdated pages or posts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 me 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 move 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.

Packing Up

When moving from WordPress to HubSpot, you need to account for everything your plugins and custom code currently handle. HubSpot bundles a lot of that functionality natively, but not all of it, so this is what keeps anything important from getting left on the curb.

The Garage

This is where the technical clutter lives. Go through every plugin your site depends on and note what it actually does: SEO, forms, page builders, online stores, membership access, custom integrations. Some of it HubSpot handles natively. Some of it won't have a home in the new place, and you'll need to decide whether to rebuild it, replace it, or finally let it go.

The Closets

This is where the content clutter lives. Pull together:

• Backup: Export a full backup of your current WordPress site 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, thank you pages, custom post type 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.

Not everything in the closet is worth boxing up. Outdated pages, thin blog posts, and forms nobody uses are garbage, not cargo. Leave them at the curb.

What Won't Fit in the New Place

Moving doesn't mean taking everything with you. The yacht stays at the marina. There's no need to move it into the garage!

When it comes to your website, there may be custom functionality that doesn't belong in HubSpot. If something on your site goes beyond a standard page or post, list it. Talk it through with your web developer to see whether it can be built in HubSpot, or whether it's better left where it is and linked to instead.

Moving Your Contacts In

Decide how your existing contact data gets into HubSpot. This is usually handled by your own team or HubSpot's onboarding support, not by your website developer. HubSpot has built in import tools for contacts, companies, and deals, with field mapping included. For larger or more complex datasets, HubSpot also has a network of accredited data migration partners. Either way, it's worth cleaning up your list first. Remove duplicate records and outdated information, fix invalid entries, and decide what's actually worth bringing over before you import it.

Consider a Phased Move

You don't have to move everything at once. Some organizations move their marketing website, blog, landing pages, and email campaigns to HubSpot first. Those benefit the most from HubSpot's CRM and marketing tools, so it's worth moving them early rather than leaving them behind. A complex application or member portal can often wait on WordPress for the time being. This is a common approach when part of your site doesn't have a clean home in HubSpot yet, or when the team needs time to adjust to a new way of publishing.

Getting the New Place Ready

Hosting

This is the easy part. HubSpot hosts everything for you, so there's no separate host to choose, no server to maintain, and no SSL certificate to renew. That upkeep simply goes away.

Staging

You won't need HubSpot's staging tool for this move. Set up your new HubSpot portal and build your site there. Until you point your domain to it, nobody can find it. In effect, it's already staged.

Domains and Subdomains

If part of your site is staying on WordPress during a phased move, 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 HubSpot.
• What's Staying Behind: This only applies if part of your site is staying on WordPress while your root domain moves to HubSpot. In that case, connect a separate subdomain, like app.yourdomain.com, to your WordPress host. Think through how you want to launch that slimmed down WordPress site, so only the content you're keeping goes live there, and anything you migrated is accounted for in your redirects. If everything is moving to HubSpot, you can skip this step.
• Email: Your email sending domain should already be its own subdomain, verified with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records. Point those records at HubSpot's marketing email tool if you're consolidating your sending there too.

Theme / Design

Your WordPress theme doesn't come with you. Decide whether to rebuild your current design as a custom HubSpot theme, or use the move as a chance to refresh it. Either way, your new theme needs to support every layout and module your content depends on.

Boxes to the Right Rooms

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 on moving day, so your search rankings and existing links stay intact.

Not everything belongs in the same box. Informational pages usually become website pages, blog posts go into HubSpot's blog tool, and anything built for a specific campaign or gated behind a form is better off as a landing page. Sorting content by what it's for, not just what it is, keeps your new site organized from day one.

Media Assets

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

Forms

Rebuild your forms natively in HubSpot. This is one part of the move that actually simplifies things: once a form lives in HubSpot, its submissions flow straight into your CRM, with no separate plugin or syncing required. Test each one before you go live. Confirm that submissions arrive where they should, confirmation emails send, and any workflows tied to that form fire correctly.

Lists and Workflows

Rebuild your important automations as HubSpot workflows. If you were piecing together email, forms, and a CRM with separate tools before, this is where that finally becomes one connected system. Not everything is worth automating again right away. This is a good time to simplify.