1. Prepare your CSV

Open your source data in Google Sheets, Excel, or Numbers and export as CSV. A few rules:

One row per contact or lead. Don’t put multiple emails or phone numbers in a single cell.
UTF-8 encoded. Excel sometimes exports as Latin-1 by default; if you see garbled accents, re-save from Sheets or use the CSV UTF-8 export option in Excel.
Column order doesn’t matter — you’ll map fields in step 3.

2. Upload

Open Import / Export from the side nav. Drop the CSV in the drop zone or click to browse. We’ll read the header row and show you a preview of the first 10 rows.

3. Map fields

Match each of your CSV columns to a Vanta CRM field:

Required: name (one column, or first + last), and email or phone (at least one).
Recommended: company, title, source, stage. These light up reports later.
Anything else: if you have data with no built-in field, add a custom field first (Settings → Custom Fields), then re-run the mapping step.

Columns you leave unmapped are dropped — we won’t store data you don’t explicitly map.

4. Deduplication

On import, we match each row against existing records by email first, then phone if email is missing. You choose what happens on a match:

Skip — existing record wins. Safe default if you’re bringing in a partial export.
Update — merge incoming fields onto the existing record. Empty cells in the CSV do not overwrite existing values; only non-empty ones do.
Create duplicate — rarely useful, but available if you really want two records.

5. Confirm and run

We show you a summary: how many will be created, how many will be updated, how many will be skipped, and any rows we couldn’t parse. Review and click Import. Imports of a few thousand rows finish in under a minute; larger imports stream in the background and you’ll see progress on the same page.

What if something goes wrong?

We don’t have a one-click undo today. If you imported the wrong file:

If it was Skip-on-match, only new records were created. Filter your contacts/leads list by import date and bulk-delete.
If it was Update-on-match, the previous values are gone unless you have a backup of the older state. Contact us via contact within 24 hours and we can pull from our database backups.

Exporting

The same page handles export — CSV download of all contacts, leads, or pipeline data. Use this to make a snapshot backup before a big import, to share data with an external accountant or analyst, or when you eventually outgrow Vanta CRM (your data is always yours).

Importing from HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive? Their native CSV exports work directly; map the columns and you’re done. Native one-click importers are on the roadmap.