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Anyone who has attempted to integrate Salesforce with HubSpot knows the pain. What starts as a seemingly straightforward project quickly devolves into a complex technical challenge that consumes resources, creates data inconsistencies, and leaves teams frustrated. The good news? There's a better approach that can transform this integration nightmare into a streamlined, reliable process.
Syncing Salesforce and HubSpot is useful if you are using both systems in your day-to-day operations (e.g. using Salesforce for Sales and HubSpot for Marketing), or if you want to migrate from one system to another.
Salesforce and HubSpot integrations have historically been difficult to implement and maintain for three fundamental reasons:
First, these platforms operate on fundamentally different data models. While they serve similar purposes, their underlying data models are different, making one-to-one mapping inherently challenging.
Second, each platform offers unique features that teams often try to force into direct equivalents in the other system, creating awkward compromises and functionality gaps.
Third, both systems handle processes and pipelines differently, leading to workflow inconsistencies when attempting to synchronize business processes across platforms.
The traditional approach to solving these challenges—using custom code or event-driven workflows to sync data—creates brittle, complex systems where missing even a single event can throw everything out of sync. This explains why achieving a basic 70% working integration might be relatively straightforward, but reaching a production-ready 99-100% reliability level often becomes a technical horror story.
Bidirectional synchronization with databases offers a dramatically simpler and more reliable approach to CRM integration. Instead of relying on complex event-driven architectures that must catch every single change (events are lost if anything goes wrong), bidirectional sync takes a declarative approach where you can see all your data at once, in real-time.
This fundamental shift transforms what was previously just "data transfer" into "data transfer and data consolidation" that works at scale. By using SQL queries to manipulate data rather than wrestling with complex APIs or custom code, you create a more reliable foundation for integration.
The key advantage? You'll never miss an event simply because of the way the system reads the data. The entire dataset is visible and accessible at all times, ensuring complete data consistency across platforms.
Using an intermediate Database to sync bidirectionally two business systems that have different underlying data models.
Another significant challenge with CRM integrations involves workflow automation. When you build workflows directly within HubSpot or Salesforce, you're creating a powerful lock-in effect. If you ever need to migrate to a different platform, all those carefully crafted workflows must be manually recreated—a time-consuming process that often leads organizations to delay necessary transitions.
This lock-in is actually a deliberate retention strategy employed by CRM vendors. By making it difficult to leave, they ensure customers think twice before switching platforms, even when business needs change.
Tools like Stacksync offer a compelling alternative. By building these same workflows outside the CRM platforms, you can transfer all your automation from one CRM instance to another almost instantly. The process becomes as simple as changing the associated connection and making minor adjustments, dramatically reducing migration time and complexity.
The difference between traditional integration approaches and bidirectional sync becomes clear when examining real-world implementations:
Traditional integration projects between Salesforce and HubSpot often take 6-12 months to reach production readiness, require ongoing maintenance from specialized developers, and still suffer from occasional data inconsistencies that impact business operations.
In contrast, bidirectional sync solutions can be implemented in days or weeks, require minimal ongoing maintenance, and provide near-perfect data consistency. This translates to significant cost savings, improved operational efficiency, and greater business agility.
As organizations increasingly rely on specialized software systems to run their operations, the ability to maintain consistent data across these platforms becomes critical. The traditional approach to CRM integration—building complex, event-driven synchronization systems—creates unnecessary technical debt and operational risk.
Bidirectional synchronization offers a fundamentally better approach by:
For organizations struggling with Salesforce and HubSpot integration challenges, bidirectional sync provides a clear path forward—one that delivers reliable results without the technical complexity and ongoing maintenance burden of traditional approaches.
Ready to transform your CRM integration strategy? Explore how Stacksync can help streamline your data infrastructure and enable more reliable, efficient cross-platform operations.
