How to Migrate from HubSpot to Brevo

Why Migrate from HubSpot to Brevo?

HubSpot is the marketing automation platform European SMBs love to hate. The product is genuinely good. The pricing is genuinely brutal — Marketing Hub Professional starts at €792/month for 2,000 contacts, escalating into “talk to sales” territory by mid-market scale. Lock-in compounds over time as you build workflows around HubSpot’s ecosystem.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the Paris-based platform that does most of what HubSpot does at a fraction of the price. Free tier covers 9,000 emails/month with unlimited contacts. Paid plans start at $9/month. Marketing automation, transactional email, SMS, WhatsApp, basic CRM — all in one platform with EU data residency by default.

For European SMBs running HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter or Professional, Brevo typically delivers 80-90% of the capability at 10-30% of the cost — while improving sovereignty posture and compliance story.

Detailed Migration Steps

Step 1: Inventory Your HubSpot Setup

Open your HubSpot admin and document:

Contact data:

• Total contacts
• Custom contact properties (and which are actively used vs accumulated cruft)
• Companies and deal data (if using HubSpot CRM)
• Lists and segmentation logic

Automation:

• Active workflows (number and complexity)
• Email sequences and triggers
• Lead scoring rules

Marketing assets:

• Active email templates
• Landing pages
• Forms (and where they’re embedded)
• Blog posts (if hosted on HubSpot CMS)

Integrations:

• E-commerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce)
• Other tools sending data to HubSpot
• Webhooks and API consumers

This document is your migration plan. The complexity here determines whether your migration is 1 week or 6 weeks.

Step 2: Set Up Brevo with Sender Authentication

In Brevo:

1. Sign up at brevo.com
2. Senders & IP → Domains → add your sending domain
3. Add the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records Brevo provides to your DNS
4. Wait for verification (typically 30-60 minutes)
5. Confirm domain shows “Authenticated”

Skip this step at your peril. Sending from an unauthenticated domain after migration is the #1 cause of post-migration deliverability collapse. Your email reputation built up through HubSpot doesn’t fully transfer — establishing it on Brevo requires proper sender authentication.

Step 3: Export Contacts from HubSpot

In HubSpot:

1. Contacts → All contacts
2. Actions → Export contacts
3. Select all properties you actively use
4. Include subscription consent timestamps (critical for GDPR migration audit trail)
5. Download CSV

Repeat for Companies and Deals if using HubSpot CRM. Also export:

• Email templates (HTML download for each frequently-used template)
• Active workflows (screenshot the workflow builder for reference — there’s no clean export format)
• Landing page URLs and assets

Step 4: Import Contacts to Brevo

In Brevo:

1. Contacts → Import Contacts
2. Upload your CSV
3. Map fields:
   • HubSpot Email → Brevo Email (required)
   • HubSpot Subscription consent → preserved in Brevo’s GDPR-compliant audit fields
   • Custom HubSpot properties → Brevo contact attributes (create them on the fly)
4. Choose target list(s) corresponding to your HubSpot lists

Brevo handles deduplication by email automatically. For 50,000+ contacts, do imports in batches of 10,000 to make any errors easier to troubleshoot.

Step 5: Recreate Email Templates

Brevo’s drag-and-drop editor is similar to HubSpot’s but not identical. For each frequently-used template:

1. Templates → Create Template
2. Either rebuild visually or paste HTML from your HubSpot export
3. Test rendering with Brevo’s preview tool across desktop and mobile
4. Save with descriptive names matching your HubSpot organization

Pro tip: this is a good moment to consolidate. Most HubSpot accounts have 50+ accumulated templates of which 5-10 are actively used. Migrate the active ones; let the rest die.

Step 6: Recreate Workflows and Automations

This is the longest step. HubSpot Workflows → Brevo Automations:

1. Brevo → Automations → Create Automation
2. Choose trigger (matching HubSpot trigger):
   • Form submission
   • Date-based (anniversary, birthday)
   • List membership
   • Custom event from API
3. Build the flow with delays, conditions, email/SMS sends
4. Activate when ready

Common HubSpot workflows and their Brevo equivalents:

HubSpot	Brevo
Lead nurture sequence	Welcome series automation
Re-engagement	Inactivity-triggered automation
Lead scoring	Brevo Score (basic) or custom scoring via API
Date-based (renewal)	Date-based automation
Behavioral (page visits)	Trigger via Brevo tracking script

For complex multi-branch workflows (HubSpot’s strength), the migration may require simplification — Brevo’s automation is solid but less elaborate than HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional’s builder. Treat this as a chance to simplify.

Step 7: Migrate Forms and Landing Pages

Forms:

• Brevo has native form builder; recreate your most-used HubSpot forms
• For embed code, replace HubSpot embed with Brevo embed
• For complex forms, Tally (Belgium) is an excellent alternative with deeper logic

Landing pages:

• Brevo includes basic landing pages
• For more polished marketing landing pages, evaluate Carrd (simple), Webflow (powerful but US), or self-host with Astro on Hetzner
• HubSpot CMS replacement is a separate project; keep it on HubSpot or migrate to a dedicated CMS like Storyblok (Austria)

Step 8: Update Website Tracking

Remove HubSpot tracking script and replace with Brevo’s tracking:

<!-- OLD: HubSpot tracking -->
<script type="text/javascript" id="hs-script-loader" async defer src="//js.hs-scripts.com/[hub-id].js"></script>

<!-- NEW: Brevo tracking -->
<script src="https://cdn.sibautomation.com/sibautomation.js"></script>

Update any forms, popups, and chat widgets accordingly. For Plausible Analytics users (recommended) you don’t lose any visitor tracking — Plausible handles that independently.

Step 9: Run Parallel for 2-4 Weeks

During parallel run:

• All new campaigns go through Brevo
• HubSpot completes any in-flight automations
• Daily reconciliation: are list counts matching? Are automations firing correctly?
• Weekly: review deliverability metrics in both systems

Step 10: Cancel HubSpot

After successful parallel run:

1. Export final data from HubSpot for compliance archive
2. Cancel HubSpot subscription (schedule for end of billing period)
3. Update internal documentation
4. Send team announcement

Tips for a Smooth Migration

• HubSpot’s strength is the ecosystem; Brevo’s strength is the price. Make peace with this trade-off explicitly. If your workflows depend deeply on HubSpot’s ecosystem features, migration will hurt.
• Don’t migrate inactive contacts. This is a perfect moment to clean. Inactive 6+ months → don’t import. Cleaner list = better deliverability + lower per-email costs.
• Re-engagement campaign during migration. Send a “we’re updating our email systems” campaign to your active list before final cutover. Improves engagement metrics immediately post-migration.
• Brevo’s free tier covers most SMB volumes. If you’re paying €1,000+/month for HubSpot and your volume fits Brevo’s free 9,000 emails/month, the math is striking.
• Cost savings compound. A typical European SMB switching from HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional (€800/month) to Brevo Premium (€60-200/month) saves €7,000-9,000/year. That’s a fully-loaded monthly headcount cost.
• For complex workflow automation, consider Make.com or n8n. If Brevo’s native automation isn’t sufficient, n8n (Berlin-based, self-hostable) handles complex multi-step flows that Brevo can’t natively express.
• Keep HubSpot CRM if you need it. This guide is about Marketing Hub. HubSpot CRM (the free version) is fine to keep using. The expensive part is Marketing Hub.