How do you export HubSpot data for an AI data license?
HubSpot holds a sales story in two layers. The records, such as contacts, companies and deals, are easy to export. The conversation around them, the emails, call notes and meeting notes, is what makes the history worth anything, and it is harder to get out. Know which layer you are exporting before anyone starts.
What a HubSpot account usually holds
| Contacts and companies | Names, titles, company details and the properties your team filled in. The part that identifies people, and the part to clean first. |
| Deals with their stages | Each opportunity, the stage it moved through and the reason a deal was marked won or lost, if anyone entered one. |
| Logged emails and notes | Messages sent from the account and the notes a salesperson wrote. This is the conversation layer. |
| Call and meeting records | Summaries, outcomes and sometimes recordings, depending on how your team used them. |
| Tickets and service history | If the service tools are used, the questions customers asked and how they were answered. |
How HubSpot data leaves the account, route by route
| Tool | What an export gives you | What is missing or needs an admin |
|---|---|---|
| Export from a list of records | A spreadsheet of contacts, companies, deals or tickets with their properties. | Most of the conversation. Property values travel, but email bodies and notes often do not. |
| Activity and engagement export | Logged emails, notes, calls and meetings tied to records, where your plan and permissions allow it. | Anything that was never logged. Email sent from a personal inbox that was not connected is not in the account. |
| The programming interface | A complete pull of records and their activity, run by a developer or a partner. | It needs someone who can write and run the pull, and the account’s limits shape how fast it goes. |
| Account backup or a migration tool | A broad copy meant for moving to another system. | The format is built for another tool, not for a clean, linked set. |
Tool names belong to their owners and are used only to say where records usually live. Export features change by plan and version, so check the current rules for your account.
Why the deal story matters more than the contact list
A contact list is a list. A deal with its emails, notes and the reason it was lost is a story with an outcome, and outcomes are what teach. If your team enters a loss reason, keep it. If it does not, the emails often carry the same information in prose.
The records most worth asking about are the ones where a person wrote something. A field that says closed won is a fact. A note that says the buyer needed legal sign-off and went quiet is judgment.
Who can run the export, and what to check before
Usually an account owner or an administrator. Exports contain personal data, so decide where the file goes before it is created, and keep it off personal laptops.
Check whether your customers were told their emails may be used this way, and whether any of the records came from a purchased list. Records that you do not have the right to share are left out.
What a HubSpot set leaves out
| Contact details of customers and prospects | Replaced with stable stand-ins so one buyer can be followed across emails, notes and deals. |
| Purchased or scraped lists | Left out. They are not yours to license. |
| Notes with sensitive personal detail | Removed. A note that cannot be cleaned reliably is excluded. |
An example, invented for illustration
A services company runs its sales in HubSpot and has logged its emails and notes for years. An administrator exports the deals and then pulls the logged emails and notes for the same deals. A set links each deal to its messages and its outcome, replaces customer details with stand-ins and leaves out a purchased list. The owner reviews a sample of the linked deals before the file goes anywhere.
Questions owners ask about this
Is a spreadsheet of our deals enough?
It is a start, but the conversation around each deal is where most of the value is. Ask how your team logged emails and notes before deciding.
Our reps used their own inboxes. What then?
Anything not logged in HubSpot is not in the account. It may still exist in the mail system, which is a separate export.
Does the export change anything in HubSpot?
No. An export copies data and leaves the account as it was. Keep the file somewhere controlled, because it holds personal information.
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Keep reading
Related kinds of records
- Quotes and estimates: A price and the argument behind it, with margins and current prices kept out unless the owner says.
- Team chat: Slack and Teams threads, where one person must stay one person and direct messages stay out.
- CRM history: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Zoho notes and timelines; fields alone say little.