Swapcard–HubSpot integration enables the import of thousands of event data points to help measure ROI & drive timely follow-ups

The Challenge

CloserStill Media, approached SpotDev to integrate their SwapCard data with their HubSpot CRM. SwapCard is a popular application used by events companies to enhance attendee engagement, maximise exhibitor ROI & drive revenue growth. 

A direct integration between the two platforms proved unreliable due to API limitations. Directly pulling Swapcard’s API data into HubSpot workflows proved impractical, the Swapcard GraphQL API returned massive datasets that exceeded HubSpot’s limits. (One query for all scans in a day could include ~90k records, hitting API size limits.)

Moreover, HubSpot’s native workflow triggers could only run daily, not at the frequency needed during live events. Initial attempts hit rate limits and timeouts, making previous efforts to integrate unreliable.

The Solution

CloserStill wanted the rich data gleaned in SwapCard such as booth interactions, and other analytics (such as session attendance, connections made, meetings made) to fuel timely follow-ups and measure event ROI.  They needed a scalable solution to sync event analytics without exceeding rate limits or timing out.

SpotDev designed a middleware integration on Microsoft Azure to handle Swapcard’s event analytics, decoupling the data processing from HubSpot’s constraints. This first attempt at a complex middleware build on Microsoft Azure, was a significant technical win for CloserStill Media, but also for SpotDev’s solutions architects and developers.

The Microsoft Azure solution demonstrates SpotDev's ability to build custom cloud middleware to extend HubSpot's native functionality.

The sophisticated solution included the following components:

Azure PostgreSQL Database: a centralised repository to store all raw and aggregated Swapcard data. The database would accumulate event data continuously and perform aggregations (e.g. counts of scans per attendee). This offloaded heavy data crunching away from HubSpot.

Azure Functions (Serverless): SpotDev employed Azure Serverless functions to query Swapcard’s APIs on an hourly basis, with the flexibility to increase frequency to every 5-10 minutes during peak event hours. The functions were coded to handle breaking up large datasets, (e.g. 15k records at a time), and manage Swapcard’s rate limiting. (Definition: *Rate limiting is a way for systems (like APIs or websites) to control how often someone can make requests in a given period-of-time.)

Instead of having HubSpot pull data itself, SpotDev flipped the setup: HubSpot would now receive updates through webhook triggers and custom code. For example, when a new event is created in HubSpot, a webhook sends the event details to an Azure function, which then starts pulling data from Swapcard for that event. (A) In the other direction, an Azure function runs every hour to push summary stats back into HubSpot, updating specific properties using HubSpot’s API (B). These stats can also be accessed by custom code inside HubSpot when needed. (C)

Example:
Let’s say CloserStill wants to track how many attendees visited a booth during an event.

• Every hour, an Azure function collects that number from Swapcard. (A)
• It then updates a property in HubSpot, like “Booth Visits” on the related event record. (B)
• Later, a HubSpot workflow with custom code might read that “Booth Visits” value to trigger follow-up emails or update reports. (C)

(Definition: *A webhook is a way for apps to talk to each other in real-time. It works like this: "When X happens in System A, immediately send a message to System B.")

Data Aggregation & Sync: The middleware aggregated metrics like “total scans per attendee” or “unique exhibitors who scanned a given attendee.” Only these summarised insights (much smaller payload) were synced into HubSpot custom fields, e.g. an attendee contact record in HubSpot could be tagged with how many times they were scanned and by which top exhibitors. This kept the data transfer efficient and under HubSpot’s API limits.

After testing the integration, it was implemented and proved successful in reliably ingesting Swapcard event data in near real-time and updated HubSpot daily with key metrics. This gave CloserStill’s sales team a live window into event engagement – for instance, a sales rep could see that Client X’s representatives scanned 150 attendees at an expo, and follow up with those leads immediately.

The Results

The solution overcame the prior limitations – e.g. even large events with tens of thousands of interactions could be processed by the Azure middleware without hitting HubSpot’s limits. With the heavy lifting on Azure, HubSpot was only receiving curated analytics rather than raw bulky data, a scalable design for future events.

The Swapcard integration project in particular stands out as a win-win: it solved a critical business need for CloserStill and became a flagship example of SpotDev’s capabilities in marrying cloud platforms with HubSpot.