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The decision to migrate from Klaviyo to HubSpot Marketing Hub is almost always driven by consolidation logic: the CRM is already in HubSpot, the sales team is on HubSpot, maybe service and the website too.
Having the marketing automation layer on a separate platform creates data sync overhead, reporting gaps, and the kind of friction that compounds over time. The consolidation case is usually sound.
What is underestimated is what consolidation actually requires.
Migrating from Klaviyo to HubSpot isn't moving email templates and contact lists from one platform to another. It's translating a data model. And the two platforms use fundamentally different models.
The Event Model Gap
Klaviyo is built around behavioral events. When someone views a product, abandons a cart, clicks a link, or makes a purchase, these are discrete events stored in Klaviyo's event log, each with properties attached. Klaviyo flows are triggered on these events, and segmentation is built against them. The entire system assumes events as the primary data primitive.
HubSpot Marketing Hub's automation is built primarily against contact properties and lifecycle stages, not event streams.
HubSpot does have custom behavioral events (available at higher tiers), but they work differently from Klaviyo's event model. They don't have the same depth of built-in ecommerce events; the trigger logic works differently; and event-based segmentation and workflow enrollment require more intentional configuration.
This means that before any contact data is moved, every Klaviyo event on which your flows and segments depend must be mapped to its HubSpot equivalent.
Some events translate cleanly. Some require custom behavioral events to be created and configured. Some require rethinking the underlying trigger logic entirely because the construct doesn't exist in HubSpot in the same form.
That mapping work is the core of the migration. It can't be skipped, and it's not fast.
The Zaps Audit
Almost every Klaviyo implementation has Zapier integrations that feed data into Klaviyo from ecommerce platforms, CRMs, event registration tools, and other systems. When you migrate away from Klaviyo, those Zaps don't automatically redirect.
They need to be inventoried and assessed, then either rebuilt for HubSpot targets or replaced with native HubSpot integrations where available.
We call this the Zaps audit, and it's the step that gets skipped most often. The consequence is that, post-migration, data previously flowing into Klaviyo from upstream systems no longer flows anywhere:
- Contacts stop being created
- Event data stops arriving
And the silence is quiet enough that it takes weeks to notice. The audit should happen before the migration starts, not after. Its output is a complete map of every Zapier integration connected to Klaviyo, what each one does, what the HubSpot equivalent is, and whether that equivalent is a native integration, a rebuilt Zap, or a custom API connection that needs to be scoped separately.
That map is also what lets you accurately scope the full migration. Migrations that look like a two-week project often turn into a six-week project once the Zaps audit reveals the actual integration surface area.
Contact And List Migration
The contact migration itself is the more straightforward part, though it carries risks that are easy to underestimate. Contact records need to be exported from Klaviyo, property-mapped to HubSpot's contact model, and imported cleanly with duplicate handling, lifecycle stage assignment, and opt-in status preserved correctly.
Klaviyo's list and segment model doesn't map directly to HubSpot's list model. Static lists translate reasonably cleanly.
Active segments in Klaviyo, which are dynamic based on event history and properties, need to be rebuilt as HubSpot active lists with equivalent filter logic. Where the underlying data model differs (which it often does, especially for event-based segments), the segment logic has to be redesigned, not just translated.
The opt-in status piece is legally non-trivial. Klaviyo and HubSpot handle consent and subscription status differently.
The migration needs to preserve the consent record for every contact, with proper mapping to HubSpot's subscription type and legal basis fields. Getting this wrong creates compliance exposure.
The Order That Works
The migration sequence we recommend: Zaps audit first, event model mapping second, list and segment rebuild third, contact migration fourth, flow rebuilds fifth, cutover last.
This order is deliberate. The Zaps audit surfaces the full integration scope. The event model mapping defines the HubSpot data architecture against which the flows and segments will be built.
The list rebuilds and contact migration establishes the contact database in its final form. The flows are built last because they depend on everything upstream being stable. Cutover happens only when the full system has been validated end-to-end.
Teams that skip the audit or start with contact migration are setting themselves up for a rebuild mid-project. The events and Zaps work surfaces requirements that change the contact data model. Migrating contacts first means doing them twice.
What The Migration Actually Is
Klaviyo-To-HubSpot migration isn't a lift-and-shift. It's a platform redesign with data migration included. The teams that handle it cleanly are the ones that treat it that way from the start, scoping the Zaps audit as a prerequisite deliverable, building the event model map before touching any contacts, and planning the cutover only after the full system has been tested.
The consolidation logic is right. The timeline to get there is usually longer than the initial estimate. Plan for the actual cost, not the optimistic estimate.
Migrating from Klaviyo to HubSpot Marketing Hub? Start with the Zaps audit. We can help you run it.
Nathan Roach, Director of Marketing
Germany-based consumer of old world wine and the written word. Offline you can find him spending time with his wife and daughter at festivities in the Rhineland.
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