How to switch from Salesforce to Nanobox (cloud or self-hosted)
Leaving Salesforce is less about the export and more about untangling everything you built on top of it: Flows, validation rules, page layouts, and the reports your team lives in. The data itself comes out cleanly as CSV. This guide walks the real path: pull your objects with Salesforce's built-in Data Export, map the columns to Nanobox, and rebuild your pipeline stages by hand. It's a weekend of work for a tidy org, longer if you've accumulated years of custom objects. Nanobox itself comes two ways: Nanobox Cloud, hosted for a flat $29/mo (or $290/yr) with unlimited users, or a self-hosted license from $399 if you want the source on your own servers — neither charges per seat, unlike the plan you're leaving.
What comes over from Salesforce
Everything below exports as CSV and imports straight into Spodus CRM. No rebuild, no re-keying.
- Contacts: names, emails, phones, titles, and mailing fields from the Contact object
- Accounts: company records map to companies in Nanobox, including industry, website, and address fields
- Opportunities: your deals, with amount, stage, and close date carried across as pipeline records
- Leads: import as contacts or as an early-stage pipeline, whichever matches your process
- Notes, Tasks, and Events: exported as separate CSVs and re-attached to the right records
- Custom fields: any custom field you added in Salesforce becomes a column you map to a Nanobox field
How the move works
Run the Data Export from Setup
In Salesforce, go to Setup and type "Data Export" in the Quick Find box. Choose "Export Now" for an immediate pull (or "Schedule Export" if you want a recurring backup first). Select the objects you actually need (Account, Contact, Opportunity, Lead, plus Task, Event, and any custom objects) and start the export. You need admin rights or an admin's permission to do this.
Download and unzip the archive
Salesforce emails you a download link when the ZIP is ready (this can take a few minutes to a few hours depending on volume). The archive contains one CSV per object, named Account.csv, Contact.csv, Opportunity.csv, and so on. Unzip it somewhere you can work, and open each file to see exactly which columns came across.
Clean and map the columns
This is the step that actually takes time. Salesforce CSVs are wide, with dozens of columns, internal IDs, and system fields you don't need. Decide which Nanobox field each column maps to, delete the noise, and standardize formats like dates and phone numbers. Keep the Salesforce record ID as a column so you can re-link notes and opportunities to the right contacts later.
Import companies first, then people, then deals
Order matters because of relationships. Import Accounts as companies, then Contacts (linked to those companies), then Opportunities as pipeline records pointing at the right company and contact. Nanobox imports CSV directly, into Nanobox Cloud or a self-hosted instance, so there's no proprietary format fighting you on the way in.
Rebuild stages, owners, and views
Your Salesforce pipeline stages, record owners, and saved list views don't travel in a CSV, so recreate them in Nanobox to match how your team works. Set up your pipeline stages, assign record owners, and rebuild the handful of views your reps open every morning.
Spot-check, then cut over
Pick ten or twenty known records and verify every field landed where it should before you trust the import. Confirm counts match the Salesforce export, check a few deals for correct amounts and stages, then point your team at Nanobox and keep the Salesforce org read-only for a month as a safety net.
What "switching from Salesforce" really involves
The hard part of leaving Salesforce was never getting the data out. Salesforce gives you a clean Data Export tool that drops every object into CSV files, and Nanobox imports CSV straight in, whether that's Nanobox Cloud (we host it, flat $29/mo) or a self-hosted instance you run and control yourself. The work lives in the gap between those two steps: deciding what to keep, mapping wide Salesforce exports onto a lean schema, and rebuilding the pipeline logic your team relies on.
That's worth saying plainly because the Salesforce sales motion frames migration as terrifying. The friction is real, but it's friction you manufactured by building deep inside their platform. Years of Flows, validation rules, custom objects, and report folders create switching cost on purpose. None of that configuration exports, and that's actually fine. Most teams discover they were maintaining automation they no longer used and paying per seat for a platform they touched 10% of.
A realistic migration looks like this: export your objects to CSV, spend the bulk of your time cleaning and mapping columns, import companies then contacts then opportunities in that order so relationships hold, and rebuild your stages and views by hand. Spot-check a sample of records before you trust the whole import, and keep the Salesforce org read-only for a month so nothing is lost while you settle in.
Be honest with yourself about scale. A few thousand records is a weekend. A decade-old org with a dozen custom objects is a week, and worth handing to us. Either way, when you're done you're on Nanobox: a flat $29/mo (or $290/yr) hosted suite, unlimited users, if you want us to run it, or a one-time self-hosted license from $399 if you'd rather own the source and the database outright. There's no per-seat meter to restart either way, and nothing left to be locked into. If you'd rather not run the import yourself, our $1,500 done-for-you launch covers the whole move.
Still weighing it up? Read the full Salesforce vs. Spodus CRM comparison or the Spodus CRM overview. Want it done for you? Our done-for-you launch includes the import.
Spodus CRM
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See Spodus CRMBuy a licenseQuestions, answered.
- No. Only data exports as CSV. The automation and configuration you built in Salesforce stays behind by design. You rebuild pipeline stages, fields, and views in Nanobox. For most teams that's a feature, not a loss: it's a chance to drop the cruft you stopped using years ago.
- For a clean org with a few thousand records and a handful of custom fields, plan on a focused weekend. If you have multiple custom objects, heavy automation, and years of history, it's a multi-day project, mostly spent on column mapping and rebuilding stages, not on the export itself.
- Yes. The Data Export tool lives in Setup and requires admin privileges or explicit permission from your admin. If you've lost admin access, you'll need to get it back before you can pull a complete export.
- No. Nanobox Cloud is the primary way to run it, a flat $29/mo (or $290/yr) for your whole team, unlimited users, never per-seat, and we handle hosting and updates. Self-hosting is available too, a one-time license from $399, if you'd rather run it on your own infrastructure. Same CRM either way.
- Yes. Our done-for-you launch is $1,500. We take your Salesforce export, map and import everything, rebuild your pipeline stages, and hand you a working Nanobox install, on Nanobox Cloud or your own server, whichever you choose.