HubSpot Audit: A Complete Guide to Reviewing Your Portal in 2026
Ever since HubSpot announced the legacy sandbox sunset, the entire community has been paying closer attention to auditing HubSpot portals to understand what actually exists inside them.
And that reaction is fair.
Making changes in a system that has evolved over the years without first reviewing it can easily lead to problems later. That is why reviewing the system first, understanding what exists, and then moving forward is the safer approach.
In this guide, we will cover everything about the HubSpot portal audit. From what it truly means, why it matters, what areas it should cover, the challenges teams face during the process, and finally, a quicker way to complete your HubSpot audit.
💡 Worth Checking: Want to know if your portal is ready for the upcoming changes? Learn how to prepare your workflow for the sandbox sunset.
What Is a HubSpot Portal Audit and Why Does It Matter?
A HubSpot portal audit is the process of reviewing your instance to understand what currently exists inside it. Over time, systems naturally grow as teams create workflows, add properties, connect integrations, and build marketing or sales assets.
While this growth helps teams with their operations, it can also make the environment harder to manage. Elements created months or even years ago may still exist in the system, and without visibility into them, making changes or migrations can become risky.
Through a HubSpot audit, teams can see the full picture of their systems. It provides a clear view of what exists inside the instance so they can understand their environment before making updates, migrations, or structural changes.
Know Your Portal Before It Surprises You
A quick scan can reveal things most teams don’t realize exist in their HubSpot portal.
Run a Quick ScanWhat Areas Should a HubSpot Audit Cover?
A HubSpot instance contains multiple components supporting different operations. When conducting a review, the goal is not just to look at one element but to understand the overall structure of the system.
A typical HubSpot health check should cover the following areas.
1. CRM Properties:
Properties store the data associated with contacts, companies, deals, and tickets. Over time, portals often accumulate a large number of custom properties. Inspecting them helps teams see all the properties that exist.
2. Workflows and Automation
Workflows automate operational tasks across the environment. Reviewing them helps teams understand how processes are currently automated and whether older workflows are still active.
3. Pipelines and Stages
Sales and service pipelines define how deals or tickets move through different stages. Analyzing these pipelines provides visibility into the structure of the sales or support process.
4. Custom Objects and Associations
Custom objects and their associations extend the HubSpot data model. Reviewing them helps teams understand how different records are connected inside the portal.
5. Forms and Landing Pages
Forms and landing pages are key components for capturing leads and running campaigns. An assessment helps teams see what assets currently exist in the portal.
Checking these elements gives teams a clear understanding of how the environment is structured and how different parts of the system interact with each other.
The Traditional Approach to HubSpot Audits
Traditionally, auditing a HubSpot portal has been a manual and detailed process. Most teams or consulting partners rely on structured analysis checklists to review different parts of the setup.
These audits typically involve reviewing multiple areas of the system, including:
Contacts and companies
Deals and pipelines
Workflows and automation
Forms and landing pages
Lists and segmentation
Dashboards and reports
Integrations
General settings
During the assessment, each category is reviewed individually to understand how the system is structured and how different components are being used.
The process usually involves:
Reviewing each section one by one
Checking data quality and property usage
Evaluating workflows and automation setup
Assessing pipeline structure and deal stages
Reviewing reporting and dashboards
Inspecting integrations connected to the portal
The findings are then documented in spreadsheets or internal reports to identify areas that may need improvement.
This checklist-based approach has traditionally been the way most teams perform system checks.
Challenges With Manual HubSpot Audits
While the traditional approach to auditing HubSpot works, it also comes with several challenges. As setup grows and more assets are added, reviewing everything manually becomes increasingly difficult.
Some of the most common challenges teams face during manual HubSpot audits include:
Time-consuming process: Reviewing workflows, properties, user permissions, and other assets individually can take hours or even days.
Information is scattered across the system: Components are spread across different sections, making it difficult to get a complete view of what exists.
Hard to understand the overall portal complexity: Without a consolidated view, it can be difficult to determine how complex the portal has become.
Difficult to compare environments: When working with multiple setups, such as sandbox and production, manually identifying differences between them can be challenging.
High chance of missing details: Since the inspection relies heavily on manual review, there is always a possibility of overlooking certain assets or configurations.
Because of these challenges, teams often spend a large portion of their analysis effort simply gathering information before they can begin analysing or improving their workspace.
A Faster Way to Audit HubSpot Portals
To overcome the challenges of manual health checks, many teams now rely on tools that can quickly scan and review HubSpot portals.
Instead of navigating through multiple sections of the org, these tools generate a structured overview of the complete instance in minutes.
One such approach is using a scanning tool like DiffSpot, which allows teams to audit or scan their portal and compare two environments to understand what exists inside them.
With a quick scan, teams can view important metadata such as:
Total assets in the account
CRM properties
Custom objects and property counts
Pipelines and stages
Property groups and associations
Forms, workflows, and landing pages
Users and access
The HubSpot auditing tool can also compare sandbox and production environments. This helps teams identify differences in properties, pipelines, custom objects, and other metadata elements.
This approach makes it significantly easier to understand what exists inside a portal before performing migrations, deployments, or major updates.
Key Takeaways
When it comes to a HubSpot portal audit, it is both an important and challenging task for teams. Not auditing the system can affect future decisions, while conducting a full review manually can become complex and time-consuming, especially for older setups with a large number of assets.
However, with the right approach or tools, teams can quickly understand their environment and make more confident decisions. HubSpot portal audit tools like DiffSpot allow admins, consultants, and operations teams to scan their instance, understand their structure, and identify differences between environments with ease.
