The challenge
A B2B video marketing and creative production agency was paying for HubSpot at a tier its eight-person team never used. The seats covered salespeople, project delivery, and back office, but the marketing automation the price tag was buying sat mostly idle.
Underneath the cost problem sat an admin one. Every web form submission needed someone to copy it across, check for duplicates, and assign follow-up, which was slow and left gaps in the pipeline. The brief was a cheaper setup that removed the manual handling, without abandoning the relationship history the team relied on.
What SME Software Help delivered
A structured CRM and marketing foundation designed to reduce cost, carry across the data worth carrying, and remove manual administration from lead capture and follow-up.
- Migration of 5,000 HubSpot contacts and sales records into Capsule CRM, scoped to the data still in active use.
- CRM customisation using tags and custom fields to segment by service interest, campaign, and engagement.
- Automated lead capture from website forms, creating contacts and applying an entry tag on submission.
- Transpond email campaigns and automations for nurture sequences and consistent follow-up at scale.
Why was the HubSpot bill out of step with the value?
The agency was paying enterprise-shaped prices for a small-team workload. HubSpot’s cost scales with marketing contacts and feature tiers, so an eight-person agency running a straightforward enquiry-to-project pipeline ends up funding automation, reporting depth, and contact allowances it never draws on.
The second problem compounded the first. There was no streamlined route from web form to CRM, so submissions needed manual intervention, which increased the risk of delays, duplication, and inconsistent follow-up. Paying a premium for a platform while still doing the data entry by hand is what made the bill hard to defend.
Where they started vs where they ended up
Our approach
The migration followed a structured sequence. Data integrity came first, automation second.
How we approached the migration
Data audit and export
Reviewed the existing HubSpot data for quality and completeness, and agreed with the agency what was worth moving. Exported contacts, notes, activity history, and custom field values, then cleaned and mapped the subset that survived that decision.
Capsule CRM configuration
Set up the CRM with a data model matching the agency's lead categorisation and pipeline stages. Created tags for high-level classification such as Client and Prospect, and for service interests such as Product Video and Social Video.
Data migration
Imported roughly 5,000 cleaned contacts and sales records into Capsule, preserving relationships, notes, and field values. Validated the import against the source export to confirm nothing in scope was lost or duplicated.
Web form automation
Embedded a web form on the agency's website connected directly to Capsule. New enquiries now automatically create a contact record and apply a Web Form Lead tag, removing manual data entry entirely.
Transpond setup and nurture
Connected Transpond to Capsule to automate marketing workflows. New leads were enrolled into nurture sequences, and existing contacts received targeted campaigns based on segmentation tags.
For a step-by-step guide to structuring web form lead capture and routing contacts by intent, the web form lead segmentation guide covers the practical setup for small B2Bs.
What should you leave behind in a CRM migration?
The most useful decision on this project was choosing not to move everything. Around 5,000 contacts and sales records went across to Capsule, and a substantial amount of older HubSpot data stayed in the export file.
That was deliberate. Years of accumulated records had been imported from earlier systems, half-completed by people who’d since left, or attached to enquiries that went nowhere in 2019. Moving that across would have carried the mess into a clean system and made every future report less trustworthy.
The test we applied was simple. If nobody could name a reason the record would be opened again, it didn’t travel. Anything tied to a live client, an open opportunity, or a relationship the team still worked was in scope; everything else stayed put in the export, which is still there if it’s ever wanted.
The 8-seat team was fully active on Capsule within four weeks, with the build itself finished in under two. Scoping the data down is a large part of why that timeline held.
For the wider set of things that go wrong when this stage is rushed, common CRM migration mistakes covers the five that cause the most damage.
Segmentation in practice
With tags and custom fields configured, the team could segment their contact base in ways that weren’t practical before. Contacts tagged Social Video, for example, received campaigns showcasing the agency’s social media production work rather than generic product video content. Because tags sync between Capsule and Transpond, that segmentation held automatically on the campaign side. Our Transpond review explains how the native CRM sync works and where its limits are.
Results and impact
- CRM subscription cost reduced by around 60% against the previous HubSpot tier, across the same 8 seats.
- 5,000 active contacts and sales records migrated, with stale legacy data deliberately excluded.
- Build completed in under two weeks, with the full team working in Capsule inside four.
- Lead capture automated, removing manual data entry and the duplication that came with it.
- Transpond automations enabled consistent follow-up at scale without adding workload.
Key takeaways for agencies and creative production businesses
Agencies facing high CRM costs and manual lead management usually benefit more from scoping the migration tightly than from finding a cheaper platform alone.
- Check what tier you’re actually using. Paying for marketing automation nobody touches is the most common reason an agency CRM bill looks wrong.
- Decide what not to migrate before you export anything. The record that nobody can justify opening again is the record that should stay behind.
- Use structured tags and custom fields to segment consistently, then hold that discipline at the point of entry.
- Automate contact creation from web forms to remove manual administration and speed up response times.
For a practical framework for approaching a CRM migration from HubSpot, the guide to switching CRM from HubSpot covers the five questions to ask and the migration process step by step. If you’re still deciding whether Capsule is the right fit for your business, the Capsule CRM fit guide walks through the five questions that determine whether it suits your team.
Weighing up a move off HubSpot?
The hard part is rarely the export. It’s deciding what deserves to come with you, and configuring the new system so the team adopts it. We can scope both with you before anything moves.
Achieving similar results on other platforms
The outcomes in this case study aren’t limited to a single toolset. With the right data model and processes, similar results can be delivered using other CRM and marketing automation platforms.
Zoho Bigin
A lightweight CRM suited to small businesses that need structured pipeline management, contact automation, and integrations without additional complexity. (Zoho Bigin)
Mailchimp
Primarily an email marketing platform with basic CRM-style audience management. Best for businesses focused on campaigns and segmentation rather than end-to-end sales pipeline management. (Mailchimp)
ActiveCampaign
Combines CRM functionality with advanced automation, supporting conditional workflows and behaviour-based targeting. Suitable for teams that want deeper automation without enterprise pricing. (ActiveCampaign)
Note: platform features vary by plan. The most reliable route is to define your segmentation and follow-up process first, then choose the toolset that supports it cleanly.