Content Hub, Website Design & Development

HubSpot Website Migration Best Practices: From Legacy to Leading

A practical guide to successfully planning and executing a migration to HubSpot websites, minimising disruption while unlocking benefits.

Super-Simple Three-Phase Plan for Website Migration Success

Phase 1: The Pre-Migration Audit Checklist
Success starts with a deep understanding of what you have now. Before any work begins, conduct a thorough audit to identify risks and dependencies on content, tech-stack, people and processes.
Phase 2: Building Your Business Case & ROI
To secure buy-in, your migration plan must connect technical details to tangible business outcomes - and be documented.
Phase 3: A Phased Migration for a Seamless Cutover
Don't treat migration as a single "go-live" event. A phased approach minimises risk and ensures a smoother transition.

A website migration can feel daunting. Digital leaders are often surprised by the complexity involved, from data mapping and SEO risks to managing internal change resistance. But with a structured approach, you can turn a potentially chaotic process into a smooth transition that unlocks significant business value. As we say, "Change doesn’t have to be chaotic".

Having delivered over 2,750+ HubSpot projects, we’ve learned that a successful migration hinges on meticulous planning and making the full demands of the project visible from day one. This guide shares our proven best practices to help you navigate your move with confidence

Keep reading for further exploration.

Pitfalls, proof points and priorities: Why migrations are often misunderstood

Digital leaders are often surprised by how complex website migrations can be - even with a modern platform like HubSpot waiting on the other side. It’s not just about moving content and flipping a switch. Common pitfalls include underestimating data mapping challenges, losing SEO equity, and mismanaging user access during the cutover.

And let’s not overlook the human factors: change resistance, unclear roles, or failing to communicate forthcoming changes to everyone who needs to know. Success hinges on making the full demands of migration visible early.

That means auditing your current stack, identifying fragile integrations, mapping out where data lives and surfacing dependency risks before any work begins.

An effective project team will not just track project milestones but create detailed checklists for everything: redirects, DNS changes, security updates, device/browser QA...

Bringing in expertise (either internal advocates or an experienced HubSpot Solutions Partner, for example) helps you approach the move with confidence, learning from others’ missteps and building a smarter project plan. Companies that prioritise risk identification, robust pre-migration checklists, and transparent communications rarely regret the investment, often reporting greater alignment and fewer post-launch issues.

Look for proof points in case studies shared by seasoned partners, which evidence how measured approaches minimise downtime and drive better outcomes.

Building your case: What to assess, who to involve, and how to plan outputs and ROI

What to assess:

Building a strong business case for website migration begins with questions: Is this just about ‘getting off a legacy system’, or are you seeking a genuinely competitive digital platform that drives performance and engagement?

Early-stage assessment should tackle more than viability. Instead, scrutinise your website content's complexity, your business' functional needs (forms, CRM, custom code vs no code requirements), industry regulatory requirements.

Who to involve:

And, importantly, make sure the new solution solves the pain points of all your relevant stakeholders using the current website. To do this, put yourself in the shoes of those who’ll use and rely on the new environment: where in their daily workflow does the current system frustrate or slow things down?

Plan outputs and ROI:

Balancing requirements and technical scope, map out your expected ROI against tangible outputs. Define what tangible outputs would make this website project a success. Consider

Improved lead capture from your website
Better content workflows that save your team time and free them up for more strategic work
Secure, scalable integrations to other systems such as your helpdesk or CRM system so you have centralised analytics that finally speak your business’s language.

Identify champions in your C-suite, IT, marketing, and frontline teams, involving them in transparent scoring of platform options and risk/benefit trade-offs. Documenting their expectations and communicating clear value is what keeps momentum (and stakeholder patience) high throughout a website migration or development project.

Quote this example website migration that reduced manual work by almost 90%

When a website stands on its own, then it's just a website. But when it's housed in the same system as your CRM, amazing things happen.

Diersch & Schröder struggled with fragmented IT systems, analogue sales processes, and weeks-long customer workflows across its energy subsidiaries. With Avidly’s HubSpot implementation, D&S achieved 240% efficiency gains, cut fuel card processing time from 7 days to 2, and unlocked €117,000 in annual savings.

The team used their website migration project to enact a business-wide transformation. Read the story here.

D&S case study Website Service Campaign Assets-3-Banner CTA short

And Futureproof your website project success without disruption or compromise

To secure a truly future-proof migration, focus on strategies that go well beyond a checklist. Start by building a clear, non-technical roadmap that everyone—from senior leaders to content editors—can understand. Identify milestones for go-live, but plan for a ‘transition window’ where both old and new systems can be monitored and refined in parallel if needed.

Having been helping people build websites for over 10 years, take it from me, a lot of problems can be solved by having expectations properly set and well documented for everybody to remember when the inevitable "go-live" pressure dials up towards the end of the project.

For example, once the new site is live, everyone should already be ready to iterate—no migration is ever flawless from day one. Celebrate milestones and create forums for user feedback during the transition. The best results come when you treat migration not as a one-off, but as an ongoing journey in optimisation and modernisation. And everybody needs coaching on this from day one of the project.

I always like to compare it to moving into a new-build house: There's an expected amount of snagging and minor fixes required once you take hold of the keys. Some things just only come to surface once a house is being lived in/a website has actually moved to the live state.

But that said, pre- and post-launch measurement is critical: set up dashboards for site health, lead tracking, and conversion so you can spot any issues (or celebrate wins) quickly after comparing to your pre-project benchmarks.

The In-Depth Three-Phase Plan for Website Migration Success

Action Plan 1: The Pre-Migration Audit Checklist

Success starts with a deep understanding of what you have now. Before any work begins, conduct a thorough audit to identify risks and dependencies.

Content & SEO Audit:

Content Inventory: Catalogue all existing pages, posts, and assets. Which content will be migrated, which will be consolidated, and which will be archived?
SEO Equity: Document your top-performing pages, keywords, and backlinks. Create a comprehensive 301 redirect map to ensure you don’t lose valuable search engine rankings.

Technical & Systems Audit:

Integrations: Identify every tool connected to your current website (e.g., CRM, marketing automation, analytics, payment gateways). Are these integrations fragile or undocumented?
Data Mapping: Where does your data live? Map out all forms, contact properties, and user data to ensure a clean transfer to HubSpot.

People & Process Audit:

Stakeholder Map: Who uses the website today? Involve champions from marketing, sales, IT, and leadership early to understand their pain points and requirements.
Workflow Analysis: Document how your team currently creates, approves, and publishes content. Where are the bottlenecks that a new platform could solve?

Action Plan 2: Building Your Business Case & ROI

To secure buy-in, your migration plan must connect technical details to tangible business outcomes.

Define Your 'Why': Move beyond simply ‘getting off a legacy system’. Are you aiming for improved lead capture , more efficient content workflows , or a single, secure view of the customer by integrating with your CRM?
Involve the Right People: Work with your stakeholders to score platform options against their pain points. Documenting their needs and showing how the new solution will make their daily work better is key to maintaining momentum.
Map Out Tangible ROI: Define what success will look like in 12 months. Will it be a 15% increase in marketing-qualified leads? A 20% reduction in time spent on website admin? Or a fully integrated tech stack that provides centralised analytics? Clear, measurable goals will justify the investment.

Action Plan 3: A Phased Migration for a Seamless Cutover

Don't treat migration as a single "go-live" event. I often compare it to moving into a new house; you should expect a small amount of "snagging" and minor fixes once you're living in it. A phased approach minimises risk and ensures a smoother transition.

Phase 1: Strategy & Build. This includes your audit, planning, and the technical build of the new site on HubSpot.
Phase 2: Content Freeze & Cutover. Plan a brief 'transition window' where no new content is added to the old site. Execute the technical cutover using a detailed checklist covering everything from DNS changes to security updates.
Phase 3: Post-Launch Monitoring & Optimisation. This is critical. For the first 30 days, use pre-built dashboards to closely monitor site health, lead tracking, and conversion rates against your pre-project benchmarks. Celebrate wins, gather user feedback, and begin your journey of continuous improvement.

Some further reading to help you get ready and convince the team:

Ready to Make Your Move with Confidence?

A successful migration isn't just about technology; it's about having a proven partner who can guide you through the complexity.

See Our Work: Read our website case studies on how we managed a multi-system migrations for some of our HubSpot customers.

Talk to an Expert: With 2,750+ successful implementations, we bring a robust and structured approach to every HubSpot project. Let's discuss how we can de-risk your website migration project.