How to Migrate from Pipedrive Without Losing Custom Fields, Notes, or Activities

Most Pipedrive migrations start with the same Google search: "export pipedrive to CSV". You grab the file, import it into the new CRM, and three days later you notice the custom fields, deal notes and six months of scheduled activities are missing. The names made it. Everything else? Rebuild it by hand.

Would you rather skip that part? We'll go through the three real ways to migrate, what each one keeps, and the one that takes ten minutes and loses nothing.

The trigger: why people search "how to migrate from Pipedrive"

Nobody migrates a CRM for fun. Something specific usually pushes them:

• The renewal shock. Pipedrive raised prices in 2025 and again in 2026. Joined at $12 a seat? You're probably paying $14 or more now, and features that used to be in Lite suddenly need Growth at $39.
• The add on pile. LeadBooster (from $32.50), Web Visitors (from $41), Smart Docs (from $32.50), Campaigns, Projects. A team of five that started at $70 a month often ends up at $200 to $250. And since AI now comes in every tier, you're paying for it in the seat price even if nobody uses it.
• Support headaches. Ever tried cancelling? Public reviews keep repeating the same complaints: billing for seats you deactivated, slow replies on anything unusual.
• The product drifting upmarket. AI, dashboards, predictive scoring, it's all in the higher tiers now, so small teams pay more for things they don't use.

Reading this? You probably know which one hit you. Good news, though: actually switching hurts a lot less than that renewal email.

What you actually need to preserve

Before you pick a route, jot down what you can't afford to lose. For most teams it's some mix of this:

1. Pipelines and stages. The exact stage names, their order, which pipeline is which. Your reps' muscle memory lives here.
2. Deals and their custom field values. Not just name and value, but the BANT fields, the lead score, the link to the call recording, the "company type" dropdown. Those values are years of your team's judgement.
3. People and organisations. Including several emails and phone numbers per person. Someone with three emails? You don't want to lose two.
4. Notes. The context your team typed on each deal: discovery call summaries, objections, who said what and when. You don't want to lose that.
5. Past activities. Calls, emails, tasks and meetings you've already logged on deals and people. They're the story of every relationship.
6. Who owns what. Which rep owns which deal, so nobody's left wondering whose it is on Monday.
7. The links between them. Deal to Person to Organisation. Lose those and your CRM turns into three unrelated lists.

What usually doesn't need to come over? The full audit log, every stage change and every edit since forever. The current state matters, the fine grained history rarely does. Most teams look at this list and realise "current state plus notes plus activities" is what they really care about.

The three migration paths

There are exactly three ways to get data out of Pipedrive and into another CRM, and they differ hugely in what survives the trip.

Path 1: CSV export → CSV import (the default, and the lossy one)

Pipedrive lets you export Deals, People and Organisations as CSV files from Settings → Tools and apps → Export data, and your new CRM imports them. That's what most "how to migrate" articles tell you to do.

What you get:

• ✅ Deal names, values, currency, status, expected close date
• ✅ Person names, primary email, primary phone
• ✅ Organization names, websites
• ✅ Owner names (as text, not as linked user references)
• ⚠️ Custom fields, but only as raw column headers. The new CRM has to recreate the field definitions before it can map any values, and most generic CSV importers won't do that for you.
• ❌ Extra emails and phones (Pipedrive's CSV keeps the main one, and the rest vanish)
• ❌ Notes (the standard CSV leaves them out completely, only the "Export from filter" route per deal has them, and even then they're a separate file you have to match up by hand)
• ❌ Activities (same story, a separate export with no automatic linking on import)
• ❌ The links between deals, people and organisations (you get IDs, but most CRMs renumber everything on import, so the links break)

Moving to Less Annoying CRM, Capsule or another CRM without a Pipedrive importer? Then this is your route, and you should plan on 4 to 8 hours of cleanup afterwards.

Path 2: Third party migration service (Trujay, Import2)

Services like Trujay and Import2 read Pipedrive's API for you and write into your new CRM's API. They keep more than CSV does, custom field mappings and basic links included, but you pay per migration ($300 to $2,000 depending on size) and it usually takes 2 to 5 business days.

For a one off move of a big workspace that you don't want to handle yourself, they're reasonable. For a small team that wants to be up and running the same afternoon? Hard to justify the price.

Path 3: Native API importer (built into the destination CRM)

Some CRMs come with their own Pipedrive importer that talks to Pipedrive's REST API directly. You paste your Pipedrive API token, confirm the field mapping, and the new CRM pulls everything through the API, custom fields, extra emails, notes and activities included.

Where it exists, it's the fastest, cheapest and most accurate route. Which CRMs had a real native Pipedrive importer in 2026, as far as we've seen?

• crm2crm, with an import wizard that's free (along with the whole CRM) and takes about 8 to 10 minutes for a typical workspace
• Salesflare, which has a Pipedrive import wizard, though you'll need a paid plan
• Capsule, with a basic importer and fewer options for custom fields
• Most others (HubSpot, Zoho, Folk, Close, Monday CRM, LACRM) only have general CSV importers that know nothing specific about Pipedrive

So the rest of this guide sticks to the API importer, since that's the route that actually gets you "ten minutes, nothing lost".

The ten minute migration: step by step

We'll use crm2crm's importer as the example, but any importer that works through the API follows roughly the same steps.

Step 1: Get your Pipedrive API token (60 seconds)

In Pipedrive go to Settings → Personal preferences → API, click "Show personal API token" and copy it. Heads up: that token can read your whole workspace, so keep it private, and revoke it after the move if you won't need it again.

Step 2: Open the import wizard (10 seconds)

In your new CRM, find the migration or import area. In crm2crm that's Settings → Migrations → "Import from Pipedrive". Paste the token and click "Validate". The wizard reads your Pipedrive workspace and confirms it can see your pipelines, deals and custom fields.

Step 3: Confirm field mapping (3 to 5 minutes)

This is the only step that needs a human. Every Pipedrive custom field shows up on the left, with a suggested match on the right:

• "Match" means the field already exists in your new CRM, either as a standard column like location or as a custom field you made earlier, so the wizard maps to it.
• "Create" means it's a new field, and the wizard makes a custom field with the same name, type and options.
• "Skip" means you'd rather leave it behind.

In most workspaces the suggestions are right 80 to 90% of the time, so a couple of minutes checking the rest is enough. Three things deserve a closer look, though:

• Dropdowns with renamed options. Renamed a Pipedrive option lately, say "Hot lead" to "Sales qualified"? Tell the wizard to use the current label.
• Date formats. Pipedrive stores dates in ISO format, and some CRMs only accept YYYY-MM-DD. The wizard handles it, but give it a quick glance anyway.
• Currency. Does your Pipedrive use a homemade currency code? We've seen "9_9", "FTE" and other internal units. Most CRMs turn those into USD. The numbers stay exactly the same, only the code changes.

Step 4: Start the import (5 to 10 minutes, runs in background)

Click "Start". The wizard works through five stages:

1. Field definitions, which creates your custom fields in the new CRM. Takes seconds.
2. Pipelines, rebuilt with exactly the same stage names. Seconds again.
3. Deals, each with its current state, owner, custom field values and links to the person and organisation. This is the slow part, about 100 ms per deal, because Pipedrive's API allows about 80 requests every 2 seconds.
4. Notes, pulled for every imported deal through /deals/{id}/flow?items=note. Also about 100 ms per deal.
5. Activities, the same way with ?items=activity, so calls, emails, tasks and meetings.

How long does it take? For 100 deals, 8 to 10 minutes from start to finish. For 1,000 deals, roughly 30 to 45 minutes. It runs in the background, so feel free to close the tab.

Step 5: Sanity check the result (5 minutes)

Once the wizard says "done", spot check three deals from different stages:

• Open the deal. Are all the custom field values there?
• Look at the linked person. Are all their emails and phones there?
• Check notes and activities. Are they on the right deal, with the right timestamps?

Something off? Much better to catch it now than two weeks later, when your reps are using the system for real.

Honest take: what doesn't migrate cleanly

Even the best importer has its limits. Here's what we've seen get dropped or change shape in real migrations:

• Homemade currency codes. Pipedrive lets you invent codes outside ISO 4217 (we've seen "9_9", "BTC" and "FTE" used for deal values). Most CRMs reject them and switch to USD. The number stays the same, the code changes. Check this before you import.
• File attachments. Files you attached to deals or people in Pipedrive usually have to be uploaded again. The migration brings the details (file name, upload date) but not the file itself. In crm2crm there's a one click step for that once the main import's done.
• Formatting in notes. Pipedrive keeps notes as HTML, and most CRMs keep plain text. Bullets and bold survive, tables and inline images don't.
• The detailed audit trail. The activities we bring over are your scheduled and logged tasks, calls and emails, past and future. The log saying "User X moved Deal Y from Stage A to Stage B at 14:23 on 2026-08-14" usually doesn't come along. Most teams don't need it. If you do, export Pipedrive's Insights or Reports separately.
• Users and roles. The migration writes the owner's name as text, so you'll recreate user accounts in the new CRM and link owners again. For a small team that's about two minutes.
• Email history. Emails synced from Gmail or Outlook need you to reconnect your mailbox in the new CRM. The migration brings the deals and people, and the email history comes back on the first sync.

None of this stops a typical small team from moving. It's stuff to know before you switch, not surprises after.

What to do after the import lands

Four things that pay off the very next morning:

1. Bring your team in. Create their user accounts in the new CRM and swap owner names like "owner_name = Alex Davidson" for the real users. Most CRMs do it in one step by matching names.
2. Reconnect email sync. Hook up Gmail or Outlook in the new CRM so future emails land on the imported deals by themselves.
3. Move one rep first. Switching everyone at once is asking for trouble. Give one person the new CRM for a week, fix whatever they bump into, then roll it out.
4. Cancel Pipedrive only after a clean week. Why burn the bridge on day one? Run both for 5 to 7 days, and once you're sure nothing's missing, cancel and enjoy the savings.

That last step is the one people skip most, and regret most. Cancelling Pipedrive in week one feels efficient. Then in week three you notice one rep's email history didn't come over, and with Pipedrive still running that's a five minute fix, not a two hour rebuild.

Migration by destination CRM

Here's a quick reference for what to expect with the usual destinations:

Destination CRM	Pipedrive import path	Custom fields preserved?	Notes & activities?
crm2crm	Native API wizard (3 phase)	Yes, schemas + values	Yes, both, anchored to deals
HubSpot	Data Sync app (ongoing sync of contacts and basic deals, not a one shot migration) or CSV; full history moves go through HubSpot's paid migration service or a third party	Partial: custom field mappings need a paid Data Hub tier; custom objects manual	Not carried by Data Sync; manual or via migration service
Zoho CRM	CSV; Zoho Wizard supports limited mapping	Partial, schemas yes, values manual	Partial, notes yes, activities limited
Salesforce	Data Loader (CSV) or paid integrator	Manual; complex schema mapping	Manual
Folk	CSV with field mapping	Manual mapping required	No, Folk's data model differs
Close	CSV	Manual	Manual; Close has its own activity model
Less Annoying CRM	CSV	Manual (LACRM has minimal custom fields)	Manual
Salesflare	Native Pipedrive importer	Yes	Yes

Only two destinations on this list, crm2crm and Salesflare, have native Pipedrive importers that move everything in one go. HubSpot's Data Sync is a real connector, but it's built for ongoing sync, not a full move with history. Everywhere else, it's CSV plus manual cleanup, or a paid migration service.

What about sales person adoption after the migration?

Migration nerves are half technical (will the data come over?) and half social (will my reps moan?). An API importer solves the technical half. The social half comes down to one question: does the new CRM feel close enough to Pipedrive that nobody pushes back?

That depends on how the new CRM is built. If it copies Pipedrive's pipeline first layout, dragging deals across stages, the same People, Organisations and Deals, the same custom fields, reps are up and running in under 15 minutes. If it's built differently (Folk's relationship graph, HubSpot's big platform), expect more retraining.

Is pushback from your reps the thing you're most worried about? Then pick a CRM shaped like Pipedrive. Their habits carry over and they'll barely notice the switch.

FAQ