Migrate from Civicrm to Pipedrive

CiviCRM Individual contacts map to Pipedrive Person records. We map first_name, last_name, email, phone, address fields, and birth_date. CiviCRM's prefix and suffix fields become custom fields on Person since Pipedrive's standard Person record does not include these. The CiviCRM contact subtype (Individual) is stored in a custom field civicrm_contact_type__c for reference.

CiviCRM Organization contacts map to Pipedrive Organization. We map organization_name, legal_name, accounting_name, and website. The primary email and phone from the CiviCRM Organization's contact details (via contact_id relationship) are stored as custom fields on the Pipedrive Organization since Organizations in Pipedrive do not hold direct communication fields.

CiviCRM Household contacts have no direct Pipedrive equivalent since Pipedrive does not have a household record type. We map Household contacts to Person records with a custom field civicrm_household__c = true and the household_name preserved in the name field. The Household's members (relationship type Household Member of) are preserved as Person-to-Person relationship links in Pipedrive.

CiviCRM Activities are the catch-all engagement record with activity_type, subject, date, details, duration, and assignee. We split by activity_type during migration: email activities map to Pipedrive Email records; tasks and follow-ups map to Pipedrive Task; meetings and calls map to Task with type indicated in a custom field. Generic activities without a type mapping land as Notes. We resolve the assignee to a Pipedrive User by email match; unresolvable assignees are stored in a reconciliation queue.

CiviCRM single-record custom groups attach to Contact via the custom.* selector in APIv4 and appear as fields on the parent entity. We query each custom group via API, map the field name and type (string, integer, date, boolean, picklist) to the equivalent Pipedrive custom field type, and create the destination field in Pipedrive before inserting records. Multi-select picklists in CiviCRM become multi-select picklist fields in Pipedrive; date fields map directly.

CiviCRM multi-record custom groups (Custom_* prefixed entities) are distinct child records with their own IDs. If the multi-record group has fewer than approximately 20 custom groups total on the instance, we use APIv4's custom.* wildcard and stay within MySQL join limits. If the instance exceeds this threshold, we fall back to entity-by-entity exports to avoid MySQL's 61-join limit. Multi-record entries are either flattened into repeating custom fields on the parent or linked via Pipedrive's custom activity or note structure, depending on the customer's preference during scoping.

CiviCRM Groups and their membership lists (GroupContact) are static membership lists. We migrate each Group as a Pipedrive Segment and populate it with the Person and Organization IDs from the migration. Dynamic (smart) Groups that use CiviCRM's search-based criteria cannot be reproduced without re-running the query criteria; we document which groups are dynamic and provide the filter definition for the customer to recreate manually in Pipedrive.

CiviCRM Relationships (e.g., Employee of, Household Member of, spousal) connect two Contacts. We map bidirectional relationships as Pipedrive Person-to-Person links for household and spousal, and Person-to-Organization links for employer relationships. Relationship type labels are stored as custom fields on the link for reference. The relationship direction (a_b Relationship as opposed to b_a) is preserved in the migration since Pipedrive's link model is bidirectional.

CiviCRM Tags are flat labels that attach to any entity. We map the tag name and attach it to the migrated Person, Organization, or Activity record in Pipedrive using Pipedrive's Label feature. Multi-entity tagging is preserved via separate Label associations per entity. Tag taxonomy (tag set groupings) does not have a Pipedrive equivalent and is flattened in the migration.

CiviCRM stores files either in the database (civicrm_file / civicrm_entity_file) or on the filesystem. We extract file content and binary data, create File records in Pipedrive linked to the parent Person or Organization via ContentDocumentLink, and store the original filename and CiviCRM-created-date as metadata on the Pipedrive File. File association to Activities is preserved via Pipedrive Note attachments.

ECK allows arbitrary custom entity types with user-defined properties and custom field attachments. These are extension-scoped and have no standard Pipedrive equivalent. We flag ECK entities during scoping, enumerate the schema (entity type name, property names, property types), and deliver them as a written custom-object specification for the customer to recreate in Pipedrive as custom fields or as a separate structured document. ECK entity-to-contact lookups are documented as reference relationships to be re-established manually.