Moving from amoCRM to Bitrix24 is rarely intimidating because of the new system's features. The real concern is a single question: "Will we lose five years' worth of our database?" Contacts, deals worth tens of millions of tenge, customer correspondence, custom fields tailored to your niche - all of it was earned through honest work, and none of it can be lost. The good news: with proper preparation, almost everything transfers. The bad news: there is no single "one-click" button, and most data loss happens not because of the tools, but because of rushing and the lack of a field map. Below is a practical breakdown of what transfers and how, where the pitfalls are, and how to complete the migration within a reasonable timeframe.
Why Companies in Kazakhstan Move from amoCRM to Bitrix24
amoCRM is a solid system for a sales department, but as soon as a business grows, it starts hitting a ceiling. Here are the real reasons for migration that we see among our clients in Kazakhstan:
- Per-user pricing adds up. amoCRM is billed solely by the number of users, with no volume discounts. For a team of 15-25 people, the annual subscription comes out noticeably more expensive than the on-premise or cloud editions of Bitrix24, which offer plans with a fixed number of users included in the package.
- You need more than just a sales department. amoCRM is about the sales pipeline. Once you need tasks, projects, document management, inventory accounting, HR, and a corporate portal in a single window, you are already in Bitrix24 territory.
- Deep integration with 1C. For businesses in Kazakhstan running their accounting on 1C, two-way exchange (products, invoices, payments, stock levels) with Bitrix24 is implemented in a standard and predictable way.
- Telephony and messengers. Wazzup (WhatsApp/Instagram/Telegram) and Asterisk work equally well with both CRMs, but in Bitrix24 chats, calls, and deals live in a single interface with no extra charges for "open channels."
- On-premise edition. When your security team or the nature of your data requires keeping the CRM on your own server, amoCRM has no on-premise option, while Bitrix24 does.
What Transfers During Migration (and What Does Not)
Technically, the migration runs through the API of both systems, or via export and import. Here is an honest map of what transfers:
Transfers in Full
- Contacts - full name, phone numbers, email addresses, job titles, links to companies.
- Companies - legal details, addresses, custom fields (BIN/IIN, industry, etc.).
- Deals - name, amount, currency, owner, creation and closing dates.
- Custom fields - text, lists, numbers, dates, checkboxes. The key is to map the data types correctly.
- Pipelines and stages - the pipeline structure transfers, but the stages must be mapped manually in advance (more on this below).
- Responsible managers - provided the users have been set up in Bitrix24 beforehand.
- Tasks and notes on deals/contacts.
Transfers with Caveats
- Messenger conversation history. The messages themselves can only be exported in a limited way through the amoCRM API. The chat history is often saved as notes (as plain text) or left in an archive, while new correspondence is conducted directly in Bitrix24 via Wazzup.
- Call recordings. Audio files are stored with the telephony provider, not in the CRM. They are transferred separately, if the provider grants access to the files.
- Files and attachments. Documents tied to deals can be exported, but this is the "heaviest" and most time-consuming stage - allocate time for it accordingly.
Practically Does Not Transfer
- Automation settings (robots, triggers, digital pipeline) - their logic is rebuilt manually, reassembling the business processes from scratch in Bitrix24.
- Widgets and third-party integrations from the amoCRM marketplace - these are reconfigured from scratch for Bitrix24.
- amoCRM internal record IDs - Bitrix24 will assign new IDs. If external systems rely on the old IDs, plan for this in advance.
Field Mapping - the Most Important Stage
90% of data loss happens precisely during field mapping. If you simply "dump" the database without a correspondence map, a phone number can end up in the "comment" field, and a deal amount can land in a text field. Mapping is a correspondence table of "field in amoCRM to field in Bitrix24." It is built before the migration, not after.
- Export the complete list of fields from amoCRM for each entity: contact, company, deal.
- Create the missing custom fields in Bitrix24 in advance, with the correct types. A list in amoCRM should become a list (not a string) in Bitrix24, a date should become a date, a number should become a number.
- Pay particular attention to list fields (dropdown values): the values must match character for character, otherwise the import will create duplicates such as "Almaty" and "almaty."
- Map the pipeline stages. amoCRM and Bitrix24 have different stage names and counts - draw up the correspondence in advance: which amoCRM status equals which Bitrix24 stage.
- Decide what to do with phone numbers and emails that have multiple values: in Bitrix24 these are multi-value fields, so verify that all numbers transfer, not just the first one.
No mapping table, no migration. First the field correspondence table, then the transfer. Never the other way around.
Risks and How to Mitigate Them
- Duplicates. A repeated or partial import can easily spawn copies of contacts. The solution: enable duplicate control in Bitrix24 by phone and email before loading, and transfer in batches.
- Broken encoding. Kazakh and Russian characters sometimes get corrupted when exported to CSV. Work in UTF-8 and verify against a test sample.
- Phone number format. +7, 8, 87xx, spaces, and parentheses - normalize everything to a single format, otherwise telephony and Wazzup will not pull up the contact card during a call.
- Lost relationships. A deal can become "detached" from a contact if records are transferred in the wrong order. The correct sequence is: companies first, then contacts, then deals.
- Double work during the transition period. While the migration is underway, managers may keep entering new deals in amoCRM. Set a "freeze" date and transfer the delta at the end.
Checklist for Moving from amoCRM to Bitrix24
- 1. Make a full export (backup) of the data from amoCRM - contacts, companies, deals, fields.
- 2. Set up all users in Bitrix24 and assign roles/access rights.
- 3. Configure the pipeline structure and deal stages to match your processes.
- 4. Create all custom fields with the correct types.
- 5. Build the field and stage mapping table.
- 6. Enable duplicate control in Bitrix24.
- 7. Normalize phone numbers and emails to a single format.
- 8. Run a test import of a small sample and check it manually.
- 9. Set a "freeze" date for entering data into amoCRM.
- 10. Perform the full transfer in this order: companies to contacts to deals to tasks/notes to files.
- 11. Transfer the delta (records created after the freeze).
- 12. Reconfigure the integrations: 1C, Wazzup, Asterisk, website/forms.
- 13. Rebuild the automation (robots, business processes).
- 14. Run reconciliation: the number of records in amoCRM equals the number in Bitrix24.
- 15. Train the managers and switch off amoCRM only after sign-off.
How Long Migration Takes
The timeline depends on the size of the database and the number of custom fields and integrations, not on the "size of the company" as such. Practical benchmarks:
- A small database (up to ~3,000 contacts, minimal custom fields, no complex automation) - 3-5 business days for the transfer itself plus configuration.
- A medium database (up to ~15,000 records, several pipelines, integration with 1C and Wazzup) - 1-2 weeks, accounting for mapping, testing, and reconfiguring integrations.
- A large database with conversation history, call recordings, and complex business processes - 3-4 weeks or more, with most of the time spent on files, automation, and reconciliation.
The lion's share of the time is not the data upload itself (that runs in a matter of hours), but the preparation: mapping, cleaning up duplicates, test runs, and reconfiguring integrations. Cutting corners at this stage is a guaranteed way to get problems after go-live. Allocate as much time to preparation as to the transfer itself, and the move will go through without data loss and without any sales downtime.
amoCRM is not switched off on moving day. First Bitrix24 runs in parallel, passes reconciliation and sign-off - and only then does the old system go to the archive.
