Migrations

Helpdesk migrations that do not murder your reporting on the way out.

Most agencies treat a migration like a data dump. Export from the old platform, import to the new one, hope the analytics still work. Three weeks later your CFO asks for last quarter's CSAT trend and finds it died in October.

We map ticket history, custom fields, macros, automations and reporting datasets before the first export runs. Reporting on the destination gets rebuilt to answer the questions your team actually asks. Cutover is planned with a rollback. Your analytics survive because we planned for them to.

From $3,500, quoted off the scoping call. Last updated August 1, 2026.

500+ implementations across the category. 16 years of experience. Zendesk Preferred Partner of 6 years, Gorgias Solutions Partner, Intercom Solution Partner, plus Aircall, Tidio, Richpanel and Zapier.

Partner status you can verify

  • Zendesk Preferred Partner
  • Gorgias Solutions Partner
  • Intercom Solution Partner
  • Aircall Partner
  • Tidio Partner
  • Richpanel Partner
  • Zapier Partner

What a helpdesk migration actually is

A helpdesk migration is the structured move of an entire support operation from one platform to another: ticket history, customer profiles, custom fields, macros, automations, integrations, AI agent configuration and reporting datasets. Done well it preserves business continuity and analytics fidelity. Done poorly it breaks reporting for six months and erases context your team needs.

Why most migrations go wrong

Three failure modes show up in every botched migration we have been called in to clean up.

Reporting gets treated as an afterthought

Tickets, fields and macros get mapped, but nobody asks what reports your team actually runs. The new instance launches, the old reporting dies with it, and someone spends six months rebuilding dashboards that should have been planned before cutover.

Ticket history fidelity gets quietly broken

Conversation threads get flattened. Internal notes get dropped. Custom field history is lost. Attachments get orphaned. A year later a customer references an old conversation and your agent finds half the context missing.

Cutover happens without a rollback

The script runs at 2am on a Saturday. Something breaks at 2:47am. Nobody can revert. Your team spends Sunday explaining to customers why their ticket numbers reset to one.

Cleaning up a botched migration takes longer and costs more than doing it right the first time.

Migrations we have actually shipped

Into Zendesk

From every major helpdesk in the category, including Freshdesk, Intercom, Gorgias and Front. The Zendesk receiving pipeline is the bulk of our migration calendar.

Into Gorgias

From Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, Front, and email-only setups running on shared Gmail or Outlook inboxes.

Into Pylon

From email-only setups, from Zendesk for B2B teams escaping the consumer ticket model, from Intercom where shared Slack workflows became the priority, and from Front.

Off Drift

To Zendesk, Gorgias or Intercom. Salesloft announced the Drift sunset on March 6, 2026, naming 1mind as the AI successor. We no longer configure Drift, we only move teams off it.

We also migrated American Expediting from Zendesk to Freshdesk under email-forwarding-only constraints with full ticket history preserved, after years of managed services and custom API work for them.

What it costs

From $3,500, quoted off the scoping call and priced by source ticket volume, not by guesswork.

The floor is built from a migration tool licence passed through at cost, roughly $300 to $500, plus around 30 hours. Those hours are real: an approved written migration plan covering what moves, what gets rebuilt and how to roll back, a sandbox test migration you sign off on, then a planned after-hours cutover.

We will tell you plainly that moving the records is the commodity part. Import2 and Help Desk Migration will sell you a 50,000-record move for a few hundred dollars. What you are paying us for is the mapping judgment, the cutover, and rebuilding the configuration on the other side. Tool licences are passed through at cost so you can verify there is no markup.

One Zendesk-specific note worth knowing before you budget: legacy custom objects have no automated migration path. CSV export and manual rebuild only. We quote that as its own line with an hour count rather than burying it.

Best for

  • Teams replatforming who cannot afford to lose reporting continuity.
  • Anyone who has been quoted a flat migration fee by someone who never looked at their data.
  • Operations with years of ticket history and real custom field depth.
  • Teams moving off Drift before the sunset forces the timing.
  • Buyers who want the rollback plan in writing before cutover night.

Not a fit if

  • You want the cheapest possible record transfer. Use a migration tool directly and keep the difference.
  • You have under a thousand tickets and no custom configuration. Self-serve will do.
  • You need it live this week. A sandbox test and a signed-off plan take longer than that.
  • You want a guaranteed flat price before anyone has seen your instance.

Sometimes the right answer is to stay where you are and reconfigure. If that is what your data says, we will tell you, and the audit will have cost you $500 instead of a migration.

Questions we get asked

Will we lose ticket history?

No. History, conversation threads, internal notes, custom field values and attachments are all mapped before anything moves, and you sign off on a sandbox test migration before the real one runs.

How long does a migration take?

Most run two to six weeks end to end, driven by source ticket volume, integration count and how clean the source instance is. The written plan and the sandbox test happen before cutover, so the cutover itself is usually a single planned after-hours window.

Why does this cost more than a migration tool?

Because moving records is the commodity part. Import2 publishes $99 under 1,000 records and $299 under 50,000. You are paying us for mapping judgment, reconfiguration on the destination, and a cutover with a rollback. We pass tool licences through at cost so you can check there is no markup.

What happens if the cutover fails?

There is a written rollback in the plan you approved before we started. That is the point of the plan. We do not run a cutover we cannot reverse.

Can you migrate Zendesk legacy custom objects?

Not automatically, and neither can anyone else. Zendesk removed legacy custom objects on July 27, 2026 and never shipped a migration tool for them. It is CSV export and manual rebuild. We quote that as its own line with an hour count rather than discovering it mid-project.

Should we migrate at all?

Sometimes not. Plenty of instances that feel broken are configured for a business stage the company has outgrown, and reconfiguring in place is cheaper and faster than moving. If that is what your data says, we will say so.

Tell us what is moving and where.

Thirty minutes, no charge. Bring your source platform, rough ticket volume, and the reports you cannot afford to lose. You leave with a fixed price or an honest reason not to move at all.