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HubSpot ticket retention: how to keep a record of old tickets before you delete them

Your retention policy says closed tickets older than a cutoff have to leave HubSpot, or a pipeline is being retired. Once they are gone, someone will still ask what a customer wrote and what your team answered. This guide is a checklist for that moment: what HubSpot's export keeps, what a delete leaves behind, and how to keep the conversations.

The short answer

HubSpot's record export keeps ticket properties, not the conversation on each ticket. Deleted records can be restored for a limited time, and some deletions are permanent at once. A record of the conversations therefore has to be made before you delete: by saving tickets one at a time, or with an archive tool.

Step 1: decide what the record must hold

Write down which tickets go (usually a pipeline, a closed status and a date before your cutoff), whether the record needs only properties or the whole conversation with internal notes and attachments, and where the archive lives and who owns it.

Step 2: export the ticket properties

HubSpot's article Export your records describes the steps, and you need export permissions.

  1. Go to CRM > Tickets. If More appears in your navigation, open it first.
  2. Filter the view to the tickets you plan to delete, for example with Advanced filters on status and close date, and save it as a view (View and filter records).
  3. In the list view, click Export at the top right of the table. In the board view, click Board options and then Export view.
  4. Choose the file format and, under Customize, the properties in your view or all properties and associations.
  5. Click Export. HubSpot emails a download link that expires after 30 days, so save the file to the archive straight away.

HubSpot describes this export as current property values and associations, and points to other routes, such as the engagements API, for activities like calls and notes. It does not describe the conversation on a ticket as part of the export.

Step 3: keep the conversations

For a handful of tickets, open each ticket record, expand the messages you need, open the browser's print dialog and choose Save as PDF. Check each file, because the PDF holds only what the page showed. For hundreds of tickets this is days of work, with no index and nothing that shows a file was not changed later.

Step 4: check the record, then delete

  • Compare the rows in the export with the tickets in your saved view and the documents you kept.
  • Read a sample of documents against the tickets in HubSpot.
  • Store the export and the documents together, where step 1 says.

HubSpot's article Restore deleted records says records of HubSpot-defined objects can be restored up to 90 days after they were deleted, from Restore records in the three-dots menu of the object's index page, by users with Account access and Add and edit users permissions. Permanent or GDPR-related deletions are not held at all. Treat the 90 days as a safety net for mistakes, not as the archive.

An archive tool: Ticket Archive for HubSpot

Ticket Archive for HubSpot is a web application for support managers who have to hand over or keep the full history of many tickets at once. It only reads from HubSpot and never changes anything there, so you archive first and delete in HubSpot yourself.

Status. Ticket Archive for HubSpot is live at ticket-archive.atesensoftware.com. You connect a HubSpot portal through HubSpot sign-in. It is not listed on the HubSpot App Marketplace and has not been certified by HubSpot. It has no customers, installations or reviews on this site yet.

  • The same selection as your policy. Choose tickets by created or closed date, pipeline, statuses and owners. You see how many match and a sample before anything starts, and previews are free.
  • One PDF per ticket. Properties and description, then the whole timeline in time order: emails and chats, internal comments, notes, calls and, optionally, logged emails and status changes. Attachments are saved next to the PDF and listed in it.
  • Something to check against. ZIP parts of about 500 MB, each with an index.csv of one row per ticket, a manifest.csv with a SHA-256 checksum for every file, and a README describing the selection. A ticket that cannot be archived is listed with the reason, which is what step 4 needs.

Limits. It is not a backup service: archives are deleted automatically 7 days after they finish, so download your copy and keep it in your own archive. The PDF font covers Latin, Greek and Cyrillic, and other characters, such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic or emoji, are printed as "?". Once the ticket is deleted the original text is no longer in HubSpot either, so check tickets in other scripts before you delete them. It holds no security certification and has not had a third-party audit.

Prices, in US dollars per HubSpot portal: Free, with up to 25 tickets per archive; $24 a month or $240 a year, with up to 10,000 tickets per archive. Payments are handled by Paddle, the merchant of record.

About Ticket Archive for HubSpot Its own website

Which route fits

  • Properties are enough: the record export, saved before you delete.
  • A few tickets need their conversation: save each one as a PDF and check it.
  • Hundreds or thousands of tickets, with an index and checksums: an archive tool, or a script of your own.

For getting tickets out as PDFs when nothing is being deleted, see How to export HubSpot tickets to PDF, with the full conversation.

Atesen Software is independent. HubSpot is a trademark of HubSpot, Inc., and this page is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by HubSpot, Inc. HubSpot's articles were checked on 17 October 2026; menus and limits can change.

Questions about this guide: support@atesensoftware.com.