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

Contact rows are matched against existing records by email. When a contact with the same email already exists, the row is skipped and the existing record wins; nothing is merged or overwritten silently. Lead rows attach to an existing contact when the email matches, so check your lead CSV for repeats before re-running an import.

5. Confirm and run

The preview shows every row with its validation state, plus any rows we couldn’t parse, before anything is written. Review and click Import. Rows import one at a time and the results list shows exactly what was created and what was skipped.

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.