Is Your HubSpot Development Workflow Ready for the Sandbox Sunset?

HubSpot

Jan 19

If you've been managing a HubSpot portal for a while, you know the Golden Rule: Never test your big ideas in a live production account. We've all relied on Sandboxes to break things safely so our actual customers never see the mess.

HubSpot legacy sandboxes sunset March 16, 2026. To prepare, create a new Standard Sandbox, migrate your connected apps, and adopt the Deploy to Production workflow before the deadline to avoid development disruption.

It's one of those updates that feels like a chore at first, but once you see the Deploy to Production feature, you'll probably wish they'd done this years ago. The December 15, 2025 Developer Changelog introduced the new workflow. Here's the breakdown of what's changing, why it actually matters, and how to move your work over.

What's Changing and Why It Matters

The old sandboxes were basically just empty HubSpot accounts. If you built a complex series of 20 workflows and 50 custom properties in the sandbox, you then had to manually recreate every single one of them in your live account. It was tedious and honestly, a bit risky for human error.

The Two Game-Changing Features

1. Sync from Production: You can pull your current live setup (properties, schemas, pipelines) into the sandbox to start with a real mirror of your configuration.

2. Deploy to Production: Once you build and test something in the sandbox, you push it into your live account with a few clicks. No more manual rebuilding.

The Breaking Change: No Resync

Here's the critical part most teams miss: Legacy sandboxes supported resyncing from production. The new model doesn't work that way. Once you create a Standard Sandbox, there's no resync button. If you need a fresh copy of production, you delete the sandbox and create a new one.

Who's affected? Enterprise Hub users with existing sandbox workflows, teams with connected apps and webhooks, and anyone using CLI-based development. If you have private apps pointing at a legacy sandbox Portal ID, those integrations will need attention.

Phase 1: Pre-Migration Assessment

Don't overthink the migration. It's essentially "out with the old, in with the new."

Before you touch anything, log into your Legacy Sandbox and take inventory. Is there anything in there you haven't finished? Since you can't automatically merge an old sandbox into a new one, you'll need to finish those projects or be ready to rebuild them in the new environment.

Assessment Checklist:

Inventory all objects currently using legacy sandbox
Document connected apps and their authentication methods
List webhooks and external services listening to sandbox events
Identify API integrations dependent on sandbox Portal ID
Review team members with sandbox access (who has Super Admin?)
Note what transfers automatically vs what needs recreation

Key Insight: The biggest migration pain points are connected apps and webhooks. Community discussions on Reddit and the HubSpot Community consistently highlight integration reconnection as the most underestimated time sink.

Phase 2: Create Your New Standard Sandbox

Creating the new environment is straightforward, but permissions matter.

Create a new sandbox standard one on hubspot — **Step-by-step:**
Navigate to **Settings > Account Management > Sandboxes** in your Production account
Verify you have Super Admin permissions (no access without it)
Click **Build standard sandbox**
Give it a name that makes sense—something like "[Company] Dev V2" works well
Select what to sync from Production during setup
Review Deploy to Production settings before finalizing
**Pro tip:** Start a naming convention now. Prefix test assets with [DEV] or [TEST] so everyone knows what's what during deployment reviews.

HubSpot has temporarily increased sandbox limits during the transition period. You can run both Legacy and Standard sandboxes until March 16, 2026, giving you time to parallel-test before cutting over.

Phase 3: Reconnect Apps & Integrations

This is where most teams underestimate time requirements. The new sandbox generates a completely fresh Portal ID, which means every integration needs attention.

Integration Migration Requirements:

  
        Integration Type
        Action Required
    
        Public Apps
        Reinstall from App Marketplace in new sandbox
    
        Private Apps
        Create new access tokens, update external code
    
        Webhooks
        Reconfigure endpoints for new Portal ID
    
        API Integrations
        Update authentication credentials and references
    
        Third-party tools
        Re-authenticate with new environment

Webhook Configuration: For project-built private apps, webhooks are defined in webhooks.json within the webhooks folder. You'll need to update these configurations to point to your new environment.

Rate Limits to Note:

Professional tier: 100 requests/10 seconds, 650K daily
Enterprise tier: 100 requests/10 seconds, 1M daily

Treat the new sandbox as a clean slate for your integrations. It's a great time to audit which apps you actually need for testing versus which were installed years ago and forgotten.

Phase 4: Test the Deploy to Production Workflow

Before committing fully, run a validation cycle.

Validation Checklist:

Create a simple custom property in the Sandbox
Go to Sandboxes settings, click Set up deployment
Select the property and push to Production
Verify it appears in your live account without typing a word (you'll see why this update is worth the hassle)
Test object sync from sandbox to production
Validate workflow behavior (deploys as "Off" by default)
Check custom property sync accuracy
Confirm CRM data isolation is maintained

What Can Be Deployed:

CRM Schema (properties, property groups, conditional logic)
Custom Objects (definitions, display properties)
Pipelines (Deal, Ticket, Custom Object)
Associations (labels and rules)
Marketing (Forms, Automated Marketing Emails)
Lists (Active and Static)
Workflows (deploy as Off)

For the complete eligibility list, see HubSpot's official documentation.

Critical Note: Only new supported assets can be deployed. Edits to assets that were copied from production cannot be deployed back. Plan your development workflow accordingly.

Advanced: API-Based Configuration Backup

The "no resync" limitation is the most common frustration with the new Standard Sandbox model. For teams with developer resources, HubSpot's REST APIs offer a workaround: export your CRM configuration to a git repository, then restore it when you need to recreate a sandbox.

What CAN be exported via API:

Asset	API Endpoint	Status
Properties	`GET /crm/v3/properties/{objectType}`	Stable
Custom Object Schemas	`GET /crm/v3/schemas`	Stable
Pipelines & Stages	`GET /crm/v3/pipelines/{objectType}`	Stable
Workflows	`GET /automation/v4/flows`	Public Beta
Association Labels	`GET /crm/v4/associations/{from}/{to}/labels`	Stable

What CANNOT be exported via API: Forms, Lists/Segments (complex filter logic), Marketing Email templates, Workflow folders and access settings.

The workflow:

Write scripts to call HubSpot APIs and save responses as JSON to a git repository
Run exports on a schedule or before major configuration changes
When sandbox refresh is needed: delete the sandbox, create a new one, run import scripts to restore

Important caveats:

This requires custom development. HubSpot doesn't provide a native "export to git" feature.
The Workflows v4 API is in public beta. Endpoints may change.
Custom code steps in workflows have known limitations for API-based management.
Connected apps still require manual reconnection regardless of configuration backup.

Commercial alternative: If building custom tooling isn't practical, Datawarehouse.io's Portal Migration Toolkit handles schema and data replication between HubSpot portals without custom code. It's HubSpot-certified and designed for exactly this use case.

Phase 5: Decommission Legacy Sandbox

Once you've validated the new environment and documented everything from the old one:

Final validation: Confirm all critical assets are either migrated or rebuilt
Update external systems: Ensure no production code still references the legacy Portal ID
Communicate to stakeholders: Notify team members of the cutover
Delete Legacy Sandbox: Free up the sandbox slot (most accounts have limits)
Update team documentation: Revise any SOPs that reference the old environment

FAQs

What happens to data in legacy sandboxes after March 16?
You lose access to legacy sandboxes entirely. Any unfinished work or configurations not migrated will need to be rebuilt in the new Standard Sandbox environment.

Can I continue using legacy sandboxes after the deadline?
No. March 16, 2026 is a hard cutoff. Legacy sandbox access will be removed regardless of migration status.

How do I migrate connected apps?
Connected apps don't migrate automatically. You'll need to reinstall public apps and create new access tokens for private apps in the new sandbox environment.

What if I don't have Super Admin access?
You cannot create or manage sandboxes without Super Admin permissions. Coordinate with your HubSpot administrator to get appropriate access before starting migration.

Does this affect all HubSpot subscription tiers?
Sandboxes require Enterprise Hub. If you're on Professional or lower, this change doesn't affect you (though you also don't have sandbox access).

How does Deploy to Production differ from the old sync?
Legacy sync pulled production data into sandbox. Deploy to Production pushes sandbox configurations to production. The data flow direction is reversed, and there's no resync capability.

What about developer sandbox access via CLI?
CLI commands have changed. The old hs sandbox sync is deprecated. Use hs project upload --account=<name> for the new workflow. Check the December Developer Rollup for details.

How long should I budget for migration?
Simple setups: 1-2 days. Complex environments with multiple integrations and webhooks: 1-2 weeks. The integration reconnection phase typically takes longer than anticipated.

The Bottom Line

March 16, 2026 is a hard deadline, and there's no extension coming.

Change is annoying, but this move from Legacy to Standard Sandbox is a massive win for anyone tired of double-handling their work. Once you're through the migration, you'll have a development environment that actually deploys changes instead of requiring copy-paste marathons. It makes the HubSpot dev process feel much more professional.

Migration itself is straightforward. The three things that trip teams up: underestimating integration reconnection time, forgetting that resync doesn't exist in the new model, and not having Super Admin permissions lined up.

Start Phase 1 this week. Eight weeks sounds like plenty of time until connected apps and webhooks eat into that buffer.

What's your biggest concern about the sandbox migration? Drop a comment below.