Migrate from Hesk to HubSpot Service Hub

Hesk tickets map directly to HubSpot Service Hub tickets. The Hesk ticket subject becomes the HubSpot ticket subject, the message body and threaded replies become HubSpot ticket conversations (thread order preserved via timestamp ordering), and Hesk status (new/open/pending/waiting/closed) maps to HubSpot ticket status values which we configure to match the Hesk taxonomy during setup. Priority maps to HubSpot priority. We use the HubSpot Tickets API for write operations with batch chunking to stay within HubSpot's 100 calls/second limit at Enterprise tier.

Hesk ticket categories map to HubSpot ticket pipelines. Each Hesk category becomes a HubSpot pipeline with stage values modelled on the Hesk status progression. We create the pipelines in HubSpot via the CRM API before any ticket import so that pipeline_id is available for every ticket record at write time.

Hesk end-user accounts (name, email, phone, IP address, creation date) map to HubSpot CRM Contacts. Email serves as the dedupe key. If a Hesk user has no email (phone-only contact), we create a synthetic email from the contact ID to satisfy HubSpot's email format requirement and flag it in the reconciliation report for the customer's admin to correct post-migration.

Hesk staff accounts (name, email, role) map to HubSpot Users. Hesk administrator and manager roles map to HubSpot Super Admin and Admin roles respectively; agent maps to a standard User role scoped to the relevant HubSpot Teams. We match by email. Staff accounts without a matching HubSpot User are held in a provisioning queue for the customer's admin to resolve before ticket import begins.

Hesk ticket custom fields (per-ticket text, number, dropdown, checkbox, and date fields) map to HubSpot ticket custom properties. We read the Hesk custom field definition table, create matching HubSpot custom properties via the CRM Properties API, then map field values during ticket import. Hesk custom field type (text, number, dropdown) is preserved as the HubSpot property type.

Hesk user custom fields (per-end-user fields) map to HubSpot Contact custom properties. These are created in HubSpot before contact import and values are written during the contact phase.

Hesk KB articles (title, HTML content, category association, attachment references) map to HubSpot knowledge base articles. We export HTML content as the article body, preserve category structure as HubSpot article category folders, and handle inline images as separate file references that are re-mapped to HubSpot file URLs post-import. Article publish status migrates as draft in HubSpot so the customer's admin reviews and publishes each article.

Hesk KB categories map to HubSpot knowledge base categories. We preserve the full category tree and re-map the parent-child hierarchy during import so that articles land in the correct folder in HubSpot.

Hesk canned responses (title, HTML reply content) map to HubSpot Snippets. We export them as a flat list and import into the Snippets feature in HubSpot Service Hub. Snippets are organisation-level in HubSpot, not scoped per agent, which is a minor structural difference from Hesk's per-staff canned responses.

Hesk attachments live on the file system with MySQL path references. We export the entire attachments directory alongside the database export, create HubSpot Files records via the Files API, and update the attachment path references in migrated tickets and KB articles with the new HubSpot file URLs. This step requires a coordinated file transfer alongside the database read and adds 30-60 minutes of transfer time for large attachment sets.

Hesk ticket history logs (opened, replied, status changed, assigned) are exported as conversation entries in HubSpot. Each history event becomes a HubSpot ticket conversation line with the event type preserved as a tag on the conversation body. We cannot create a native audit log entry in HubSpot because the audit log is system-generated, but the event content is visible in the ticket timeline as conversation entries.

Hesk configuration settings (ticket status labels, priority labels, email routing, branding) are exported as a written configuration inventory. We do not apply them programmatically to HubSpot because HubSpot status and priority labels are configured manually in Settings > Objects > Tickets. We deliver a configuration guide mapping each Hesk setting to its HubSpot equivalent so the admin applies them during the parallel setup phase.