How to Audit a Salesforce-HubSpot Integration (Marketplace App or Custom-Built)

July 2026 · 6 min read

Quick answer: Auditing a Salesforce-HubSpot integration starts with the business process, not the settings menu: how a lead actually moves from marketing to sales, where the handoffs happen, and who owns the record at each stage. From there, you check what data is supposed to sync, whether it’s actually syncing correctly, where errors are piling up, and whether both sales and marketing teams still trust the numbers. The process is largely the same whether you’re using HubSpot’s native Salesforce integration (a marketplace app) or a custom-built connection, you just look in different places for the technical evidence.

If your sales team doesn’t trust the deal data in HubSpot, or your marketing team can’t explain why lead counts don’t match between systems, your integration probably needs an audit. Here’s how to run one.

 

Why Salesforce-HubSpot integrations break down over time

No integration stays healthy on its own. Field mappings get added by one admin and forgotten by the next. Someone changes a picklist value in Salesforce without updating the corresponding HubSpot property. A new deal stage gets added to the sales pipeline but never gets mapped to a lifecycle stage. None of these are dramatic failures, they’re small drifts that compound until reports stop making sense.

The most common symptoms of a broken sync: duplicate contacts or leads showing up in one system but not the other, deal amounts or close dates that don’t match between Salesforce and HubSpot, marketing attribution data that stops flowing to Salesforce opportunities, and sales reps who’ve quietly stopped checking HubSpot because “the data’s always wrong.”

If any of that sounds familiar, it’s time for an audit, not a rebuild. Most integration problems are fixable without starting over.

Marketplace app vs. custom-built: what’s actually different

HubSpot’s native Salesforce integration is a marketplace app that HubSpot built and maintains. It handles authentication, sync scheduling, and error logging for you, and it’s managed through a settings UI inside HubSpot (field mappings, sync direction, inclusion lists, and a dedicated sync errors dashboard). Most small and mid-sized companies use this version.

A custom-built integration connects the two systems through middleware (like Workato, Tray.io, or a similar iPaaS) or through code your team wrote directly against the Salesforce and HubSpot APIs. Companies build custom integrations when they need sync logic HubSpot’s native app doesn’t support, complex custom object relationships, conditional sync rules, or real-time triggers on specific field changes.

The audit goals are identical in both cases. The difference is where you go to find the evidence.

The core audit checklist

Run through these steps regardless of which type of integration you have. Where marketplace apps and custom builds require different approaches, that’s called out below.

  1. Map the business process first, before you touch any settings. Walk through how a record actually moves from a marketing lead to a closed deal today, who owns it at each stage, when it hands off from marketing to sales, and what each team does with the data at that moment. Talk to the reps who use the systems daily, not just the admins; they’ll know where the handoff really breaks down. A sync can be technically flawless and still fail the business if it mirrors a process no one follows anymore.
  1. Inventory what’s supposed to sync. Now translate that process into systems. List every object that syncs between systems, typically Contacts/Leads, Companies/Accounts, and Deals/Opportunities, plus any custom objects, and for each one, document which system is the source of truth. If both systems can edit the same field, you need a documented rule for which one wins.
  1. Check the field mappings line by line. Open your field mapping configuration and compare it against the process you just mapped, not against what was configured at setup. Look for mapped fields that no longer exist in one system (orphaned mappings), fields with mismatched data types (a Salesforce picklist mapped to a HubSpot free-text field, for example), and business-critical fields that aren’t mapped at all.
  1. Review sync direction and filters. Confirm the sync direction (one-way or two-way) matches the handoff points you mapped in step one, and check your inclusion or exclusion rules, the filters that determine which records actually sync. It’s common to find records silently excluded because a filter rule was set up years ago and never revisited.
  1. Pull the error logs. In HubSpot’s native integration, this means the Salesforce Sync Errors dashboard inside your integration settings. For a custom build, it means the middleware platform’s run history or your application logs. Look for recurring errors, not just one-off failures, a validation rule rejecting the same field update every day is worth fixing; a single timeout isn’t.
  1. Reconcile record counts. Spot-check volumes on both sides. If Salesforce shows 4,200 open opportunities and HubSpot shows 3,100 open deals, something in your sync, filters, error backlog, or mapping logic, is dropping records.
  1. Check for duplicate creation. Duplicates usually come from matching logic that relies on a single field (like email) without accounting for edge cases, blank emails, formatting differences, or records created through different entry points before the sync catches them.
  1. Validate lifecycle stage and pipeline stage alignment. Confirm that HubSpot lifecycle stages and Salesforce lead/opportunity stages still map the way your revenue process actually works today. Sales and marketing teams change their processes more often than they update the integration, this is usually where step one’s process map and the live configuration have drifted furthest apart.
  1. Test sync speed against business need. Near-real-time sync matters for sales handoffs; a daily batch might be fine for reporting-only fields. Confirm your actual sync frequency matches what the business needs, not just what was configured at setup.
  1. Audit authentication and API health. Check when the connecting user’s credentials or OAuth token were last refreshed, whether that user still has the right permissions in Salesforce, and whether you’re approaching API call limits. Native integrations manage most of this automatically; custom builds put this responsibility on your team.
  1. Review error handling and retry logic (custom builds only). A well-built custom integration retries failed calls, logs failures somewhere a human will actually see them, and alerts someone when error rates spike. If your custom integration fails silently, that’s the single biggest risk to fix first.
  1. Document what you find. An audit that lives only in your head doesn’t help the next person. Write down the business process, every mapping, every filter, and every known issue in a shared doc, even a simple one. This becomes your baseline for the next audit.

Choosing the right partner

There’s no shortage of agencies offering HubSpot migration services, but the ones worth hiring will answer these seven questions with specifics, not generalities. Data audits, custom object mapping, integration testing, and post-launch support aren’t optional extras. They’re the difference between a migration that quietly strengthens your CRM and one that creates cleanup work for the next two years.

If you’re evaluating CRM migration agencies for an upcoming HubSpot move, use this list as your screening checklist before the first sales call.

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