Key takeaways
- Data migrates; configuration is rebuilt. Plan for both.
- The relationships matter as much as the records: which ticket belongs to which company, who wrote which reply, and when.
- There are three ways to do it: a built-in importer, a self-serve tool, or a managed migration.
What moves
| Object | What travels with it |
|---|---|
| Companies | Their fields, and the contacts and tickets attached to them |
| Contacts | Email, phone, external ID and custom fields, matched rather than merged blindly |
| Tickets or conversations | Status, priority, assignee, team, custom fields, tags |
| Replies and internal notes | In order, with author and date, notes kept internal |
| Attachments | As files, on the message they belong to |
| Knowledge base | Categories, sections or collections, articles and translations |
Three ways to migrate a helpdesk
| Route | Fits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| The destination’s built-in importer | Simple, one-off moves within its limits | What it leaves out. Intercom’s Zendesk importer, for example, is aimed at fewer than 150,000 tickets and does not bring tags or side conversations. |
| A self-serve migration tool | Teams with time to map and test themselves | You own the mapping, the testing and the failed records. |
| A managed migration | Large or messy histories and fixed dates | Who actually does the work. Ask for a written mapping and a sample run first. |
How a migration runs
- 1.Connect both platforms with API credentials.
- 2.Map every field and every value, in writing.
- 3.Run a sample of your own records and check it in the destination.
- 4.Run the full migration while the team keeps working.
- 5.Cut over with a delta run that carries only what changed since.
- 6.Reconcile record counts on both sides.
On DataGrine you can run these steps self-serve on the platform, or have the migration team handle them end to end, with 24/7 support either way. Each stage is covered in the helpdesk migration checklist. The same process runs whichever pair you are moving between, including Zendesk to Freshdesk, Freshdesk to Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud to Intercom and HubSpot to Intercom.