How to Migrate From Mailchimp to HubSpot (Free CRM Guide)

Moving from Mailchimp to HubSpot is a different kind of switch from moving between two newsletter tools. You are not just changing where campaigns are sent from — you are moving your list into a CRM, where every contact can also carry companies, deals, tickets, and a full activity timeline. That is the attraction, and it is also why this migration needs more planning than a simple list import.

The honest framing first: contacts export from Mailchimp and import into HubSpot cleanly as a file-based import. Automations do not transfer as objects — Mailchimp Customer Journeys are rebuilt as HubSpot workflows, and the depth of workflow you can rebuild depends heavily on your HubSpot tier. The free CRM tier is a genuine starting point, with forms, a CRM, and a capped monthly email allowance, but it is not a like-for-like replacement for a paid Mailchimp plan. Budget most of your migration time for the automation rebuild and the marketing-contact decisions, not the import itself.

Why creators and small teams switch

The documented reason is consolidation. HubSpot’s free tools bundle a CRM with marketing email, lead-capture forms, live chat, and basic automation in one account, with no credit card required and free access for up to two users on the free tier. For a creator whose list has started to turn into a business — sponsorship enquiries, product buyers, coaching leads, brand deals — having those contacts live in the same system as deals and follow-ups removes the sync work between an email tool and a separate CRM.

There is a second, quieter reason. Mailchimp’s free plan has shrunk to a very small contact and send allowance, and its paid plans bill on stored contacts. HubSpot’s model is different: you choose which contacts count as marketing contacts, and contacts set as non-marketing can be stored in the CRM without being targetable by marketing email or ads. That distinction — who you market to versus who you simply keep a record of — is the single most important concept to understand before you import anyone. If you are still deciding whether HubSpot belongs on your shortlist at all, start with best email marketing for creators, which scores it against the dedicated creator platforms.

Pre-migration audit

Do this inside Mailchimp before you touch HubSpot. Everything here takes one focused session:

• Clean your list. Remove hard bounces and cleaned contacts, and separate out unsubscribes. You only want to import people who can legally receive your emails — importing dead addresses hurts deliverability from day one (see email deliverability for creators for why list hygiene matters).
• Export your tags, segments, and groups inventory. HubSpot does not use Mailchimp’s audience, group, and tag structure, so you need a written map of how your list is organized before you decide what each tag becomes: a contact property value, a static list, or an active list.
• Inventory your automations. List every active Mailchimp Customer Journey and classic automation: name, trigger, steps, and what it sends. You will rebuild each one as a HubSpot workflow.
• Screenshot every automation workflow. The visual layout will not transfer — screenshots are your rebuild blueprint.
• Note your templates. Record which templates are custom-coded (exportable as HTML) versus drag-and-drop (not exportable — plan to rebuild them).
• Decide your marketing contacts. For each segment, decide in advance whether those contacts will be set as marketing contacts in HubSpot (targetable, and counted toward your paid contact tier on paid plans) or stored as non-marketing contacts.
• Export your reports separately. There is no documented path for importing Mailchimp reporting history into HubSpot. Download what you want to keep for your records.
• Back up everything. Keep the CSVs, screenshots, and report exports in a dated folder before you start.

The migration steps

Step 1 — Export your contacts from Mailchimp

Mailchimp lets you export entire audiences, segments, tags, and groups as CSV from its audience export tools. ZIP exports can separate subscribed, unsubscribed, non-subscribed, and cleaned contacts into different files. Exports include audience fields, marketing permissions, member rating, opt-in and confirmation metadata, geolocation, notes, and tags. They exclude report engagement metrics, purchase history, language, predicted demographics, favorite email client, social profile data, and complete profile-update history.

Practical note: export the subscribed contacts as your primary import file. Keep the unsubscribed and cleaned export too — not to mail (never re-import unsubscribes as marketable contacts), but because HubSpot has a dedicated opt-out import for exactly that file, covered in Step 3.

Step 2 — Export your templates and assets

This step has a hard documented limit on the Mailchimp side: only custom-coded templates can be exported as HTML. Drag-and-drop templates cannot be exported. Save the HTML for custom-coded templates; for everything else, take screenshots and plan to rebuild in HubSpot’s editor. Direct Mailchimp-template-to-HubSpot transfer is not a documented path — export what you can, rebuild the rest.

Step 3 — Set up your HubSpot account and import your suppression list first

Create a HubSpot account and start on the free tools: the free CRM plus marketing email with a capped allowance of sends per calendar month, forms, live chat with HubSpot branding, and one automated email action. That is enough to import, organize, and test — it is not enough to run a full automation program, which is a paid-tier decision you should make deliberately, after the import works.

Before importing your marketable list, import your unsubscribes as an opt-out list. HubSpot’s documented opt-out import takes a CSV with an Email column, and sets the Unsubscribed from all email property for those addresses so they are ineligible for future marketing email. Addresses added this way are not created as contacts and do not add to your billable contact total, unless they already exist as contacts in your account. Doing suppression first means an accidental send later cannot reach people who already opted out on Mailchimp.

Step 4 — Import your contacts into HubSpot

HubSpot offers two documented import routes:

• The quick contact import (recommended for a contacts-only move): it creates or updates contacts from a spreadsheet with fewer steps, without configuring object associations or advanced settings. Your file must contain contact data only, be in CSV or spreadsheet format, include a header row with one contact per row, and use a separate column for each property. During the import you review each column mapping, map unmapped columns to an existing HubSpot property or create a new property, name the import, tick the consent checkbox, and finish.
• The advanced import tool: use this when you also need to import other objects (companies, deals, tickets), create associations between them, or perform advanced actions such as setting marketing-contact status in bulk.

Two planning points matter more than the mechanics. First, Mailchimp tags do not arrive as tags — decide from your audit map whether each tag becomes a value in a custom contact property (a multi-select property works well for former tags) or membership of a HubSpot list, and create those properties before you import so the columns have somewhere to land. Second, set marketing-contact status deliberately: on paid Marketing Hub plans, your included marketing contacts vary by tier (Starter includes a base tier, Professional a larger one, and Enterprise a larger one still), and send allowances are calculated as a multiple of your marketing-contact tier per calendar month. Importing everyone as a marketing contact when half the list is an archive is how migrations become unexpectedly expensive.

Step 5 — Recreate your forms and landing pages

Rebuild your signup forms in HubSpot (forms are included on the free tools) and point your website’s embedded forms and popups at the new versions, so new submissions flow straight into the CRM. HubSpot also documents an integration with Mailchimp that can surface Mailchimp email activity on HubSpot contact records and let you build segments from that activity — useful as a bridge during a parallel run, with the documented caveat that historical campaign data syncs only for the previous month. Keep the Mailchimp forms live until you have confirmed the HubSpot versions are capturing correctly — overlap is fine during the transition. If forms and pages are your main growth engine, compare the approach with the dedicated tools in best landing page builders for creators before rebuilding everything twice.

Step 6 — Rebuild your automations as workflows

This is the real work. There is no official export-and-import path for automations — Mailchimp Customer Journeys are rebuilt as HubSpot workflows, working from your screenshots and inventory. Map each journey by trigger and intent: a signup trigger becomes a form-submission workflow enrolment, a tag-added trigger becomes a property-change or list-membership enrolment, a time delay becomes a workflow delay, and a send step becomes a workflow email action.

Be tier-aware while you rebuild. The free tools include a single automated email action. Starter adds simple marketing automation with a limited number of automated actions. Full omni-channel marketing automation with unlimited actions is a Professional-tier capability, alongside features such as lead scoring and custom reporting. The practical sequence is: rebuild your welcome sequence first, then your highest-revenue journey, and only then decide whether the remaining journeys justify the tier they require. Any Mailchimp trigger without a HubSpot equivalent should be labeled unsupported in your plan — do not invent a workaround; check HubSpot’s current workflow documentation for the closest supported enrolment trigger.

Step 7 — Authenticate your sending domain (DNS)

Do not send marketing email from HubSpot until your sending domain is authenticated. HubSpot’s documented connection process runs from Settings, through Content, to Domains & URLs, and the Email Sending tab, where you connect a sending domain using an email address on that domain. During the process you set up four record types at your DNS provider: MX, DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. DKIM requires two CNAME records, while SPF and DMARC each require a TXT record, using the exact host and data values HubSpot generates for your account.

Two details from the official guidance are worth following literally. If you already have an SPF record, add HubSpot’s include value to the existing record rather than creating a second one, and make sure the version string and the all flag appear only once. And allow time for propagation: HubSpot documents that records usually update within an hour or so but can take as long as 48 hours, and recommends waiting at least 20 minutes before checking status. HubSpot will show the domain as not authenticated, partially authenticated (DKIM verified, SPF or DMARC still pending), or authenticated once all three methods verify. Our deliverability guide for creators explains what each record does if you want the background.

Step 8 — Warm up, test, then switch

1. Send a test campaign to a small segment of your most engaged subscribers first, and confirm delivery, formatting, and links. HubSpot’s own domain-change guidance makes the same recommendation: announce in phases, start with highly engaged contacts on the new domain, and transition volume slowly over time.
2. Verify the full journey end to end: form submission creates a contact, the contact is set to the right marketing status, the welcome workflow enrols them, and the opt-out import correctly blocks a test unsubscribe address.
3. Keep Mailchimp active during the switch. Run both platforms in parallel for at least one send cycle so nothing falls through the cracks, and tell subscribers the sending domain is changing, with a recommendation to allowlist the new domain — again, a step HubSpot’s own guidance recommends.
4. Monitor open, click, and unsubscribe rates after the first sends. A small dip in engagement after a domain change is expected; a cliff is a signal to pause and check authentication.
5. Once HubSpot is sending cleanly, sunset Mailchimp: cancel or downgrade the plan, export a final backup, confirm no active integrations still point at it, and document the cutover date for your records.

What transfers vs what doesn’t

Per the official import and export documentation from both vendors:

QA checklist

Run this before your first full-list send from HubSpot:

• Contact counts match: Mailchimp subscribed export count equals HubSpot imported count, minus documented import errors you have reviewed.
• A sample of contacts spot-checked: names, custom fields, and former-tag property values landed on the right records.
• Opt-out import processed, and a known unsubscribe address shows as unsubscribed in HubSpot.
• Marketing-contact status is set as planned — no segment was accidentally imported as all-marketing or all-non-marketing.
• Every live form on your site submits to HubSpot, and a test submission created a contact and enrolled it in the welcome workflow.
• Welcome workflow and your top revenue journey rebuilt, enabled, and test-enrolled with an internal address.
• Sending domain shows as authenticated (DKIM, SPF, and DMARC all verified) in domain settings.
• Test campaign sent to an engaged segment and checked in a real inbox: rendering, links, unsubscribe, and physical address all correct.
• Mailchimp kept active for one parallel send cycle, with a dated final backup exported before cancellation.

The verdict

Plan the migration as a weekend for the audit, export, and import, then a second pass for the workflow rebuild — starting with the welcome sequence — and only cut Mailchimp loose once HubSpot is authenticated, tested, and sending cleanly to an engaged segment.

How this guide was researched

No hands-on testing was performed and none is claimed. Every step, limit, and mapping above comes from official vendor documentation read in October 2026: HubSpot’s pricing page for Marketing Hub (free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise inclusions, marketing-contact tiers, and send multiples), its knowledge base articles on importing contacts, importing an opt-out list, managing email authentication, and its Mailchimp integration; and Mailchimp’s help documentation on contact and template export, as previously captured for our Mailchimp migration coverage. Where official docs were silent — notably, any direct transfer of automation workflows or templates — the guide says so instead of filling the gap. Pricing pages and plan inclusions change — recheck HubSpot’s current plan terms on the official pricing page before you commit.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & verification

• HubSpot — Marketing Hub pricing — read in October 2026
• HubSpot — Import contacts (knowledge base) — read in October 2026
• HubSpot — Import an opt-out list (knowledge base) — read in October 2026
• HubSpot — Manage your email authentication (knowledge base) — read in October 2026
• HubSpot — Use HubSpot’s integration with Mailchimp (knowledge base) — read in October 2026
• Mailchimp — View and export contacts — read in October 2026
• Mailchimp — Export template HTML — read in October 2026

For most creators, this move is justified only when the list has outgrown being just a list. If your contacts are becoming clients, sponsors, and deals, HubSpot’s free CRM tier is a low-risk place to land them — import carefully, suppress first, authenticate before you send, and rebuild only the automations that earn their tier. If none of that sounds like your business, stay on a dedicated email platform and revisit HubSpot when the pipeline, not the newsletter, is the problem.