What moves when you switch CRM

What the pattern means

• Records are the easy part. Contacts come over in 20 of 20 guides and deals in 18, through a direct importer or an export file (the rest don’t say). The work is in what those records do.
• Automations are the hidden bill. 17 of 20 guides say workflows are rebuilt by hand; 10 also say pipeline stages are set up again.
• Something usually stays behind. In 9 of 20 switches the guide names data that does not come over at all, such as email history, reports or campaign data. Export it before the old plan ends.
• Run both for a while. 11 of the guides say you can, or should, keep the old CRM running during the switch.

Method

Each row comes from one published HelpCompare migration guide, which was checked against the vendors’ own import documentation on the date shown in the dataset. For every fact we store a verbatim quote from that guide, so you can check it. If a guide does not mention a data type, the table shows a dash: that means “not stated”, not “moves fine”. We publish no hours, costs or difficulty scores here because the guides don’t state them, and we don’t estimate them. To estimate your own switch, use the switching cost calculator.

The table is verified data. “What the pattern means” and the bottom line above are editorial assessment, based on that data (how we separate the two).