This guide will show you how to use HubSpot developer test accounts and HubSpot sandboxes to setup a dev environment for your Sequin HubSpot sync. With a development environment, you’ll be able to easily build, iterate, and test your features. Then, you can copy the configuration of your dev sync to your production sync.

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Creating a dev environment

HubSpot provides two types of dev environments:
  1. Developer test accounts: These are free HubSpot accounts that you can use to build and test your integration. You’ll need to manually replicate your production data model in your test account.
  2. Sandboxes: These are full copies of your production HubSpot account purpose built for replicating your production data for testing and development. However, only HubSpot enterprise accounts have access to sandboxes, and they require super admin permissions.

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Creating a HubSpot developer account

Follow these steps to create a HubSpot developer test account:
  1. Navigate to the HubSpot Developer getting started page: https://developers.hubspot.com/get-started
  2. Click the Create App Developer Account button on the left. Then fill out the form to create an account.
  3. Once your developer accounts is created, you’ll add a HubSpot app testing environment. Navigate to the Testing tab on the top, and then click the Create app test account button.
  4. Give your test account a name - and click Create. You can create up to 10 test accounts per developer account.
  5. Once the account is created, you’ll see it appear on the Testing tab. Click to the name of the account to open it. You now have a HubSpot test account to use for development.
  6. Configure this test account to replicate your production HubSpot account. Create custom objects, properties, and workflows to match your production account. You can also import production data into your test account so you have relevant contacts, companies, and deals to work with.
For development purposes, you often don’t need a full copy of your production data. In fact, we recommend importing a small subset of your production data (or creating fake data) into your test account. This will make it easier to test your integration.

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Creating a HubSpot sandbox

Unlike test accounts, which require you to manually replicate your production data model, sandboxes are a full copy of your production HubSpot account. This makes it even easier to test your integration with a full replica.
Sandboxes are only available to HubSpot Enterprise customers. Also, only super admin’s can create sandboxes.
To create a sandbox, ask your super admin to follow these steps:
  1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to the settings page by clicking the gear icon.
  2. In the left sidebar menu, select Sandboxes. Then click the Build standard sandbox button.
  3. Enter the name of the sandbox, and then select which data you want to replicate into the sandbox. You can choose to sync all supported assets, or select specific assets to sync.
  4. Review your sandbox configuration, and when you’re happy with your selection, click Build standard sandbox button.

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Creating a dev sync

With your HubSpot test account or Sandbox ready to use, you can now create your Sequin sync. When connecting HubSpot to Sequin, you’ll select the new test account / sandbox you just created when authenticating with HubSpot. To help you delineate between your production and development syncs, you can tag your sync as “dev” in the sync configuration. From here, build your integration as you normally would. Working with development data will make it easier for you to create, update, and delete records without any possibility of breaking or corrupting production data. As you build, note down any new objects or properties you create, as you’ll need to create these in your production HubSpot account as well.

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Move to production

Once your integration is built and tested, you can move your integration to production. To do this, you’ll copy your dev sync’s configuration to a new sync that points to your production HubSpot account and production database:
  1. Login to your production HubSpot account and create any new tables or columns you created in your development base (you may need to ask a HubSpot admin to do this).
  2. In Sequin, create a new HubSpot sync that points to your production HubSpot account and connects it to the database you’ll use in production.
  3. When mapping your tables and columns in the Sequin console, you can copy the mapping from your development sync to your production sync by clicking the Copy config from button. This will ensure that your production sync is configured the same way as your development sync.
  4. Once your production sync is configured, Sequin will backfill your production database with data from your production HubSpot base and keep it in sync.
  5. With your database migration complete, you can now merge and deploy your branch into production.

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Dev lifecycle

Over the course of your integration with HubSpot, your production HubSpot account will likely drift from the configuration of your HubSpot test account or sandbox. For example, you’ll likely create new objects, properties, and workflows in production that you didn’t create in development. Sequin will handle these changes in production with production schema migrations. But when you return to development, you’ll need to update your test account or refresh the sandbox to reflect the changes in production. In Sequin, you can do this by copying your production sync configuration to your development sync. You’ll then repeat the process of building and testing your integration in development, copying your dev sync configuration to a new production sync, and merging your changes into production.