Do you wish to migrate to PrestaShop but have been putting off this procedure due to the fear of replatforming? There's no need to! We've composed a detailed step-by-step guide to lead you through the whole process of switching carts. Dig in and transfer your store to a new platform without spending much time and effort.
PrestaShop is a freemium open-source ecommerce solution that currently powers 243,084 live websites worldwide. This number clearly shows that the shopping cart has many benefits and works brilliantly. Intuitiveness, excellent SEO and marketing tools, and strong security - all these characteristics make PrestaShop one of the leaders in the ecommerce industry. Unsurprisingly, more and more merchants want to change their current shopping software and migrate to PrestaShop.
According to BuiltWith, the popularity of the platform has grown significantly over the last decade:
Like all the ecommerce leading platforms, PrestaShop comes packed with numerous useful features that make it the #1 choice for business owners worldwide:
Basically, at the moment, there are three ways of PrestaShop migration:
If you want to create 301 redirects of your current URLs, please, choose the additional option "Create 301 redirects on your target store after migration" in the Migration Wizard. But, note that this also requires the installation of a paid 301, 302, 303 URL Redirects and 404 – SEO Module prior to the migration. Also, due to PrestaShop's particularities, ID numbers will be added to category and product URLs in the process of data transfer. Thus, it will negatively impact the newly-created store's SEO. To prevent this, we strongly recommend our customers to choose the additional option "Migrate categories and products SEO URLs" (which also works only together with the module mentioned above).
Cart2Cart provides its users with the possibility to migrate passwords from a majority of shopping carts (the complete list can be found here). To transfer customers' passwords, you'll have to download our free plugin and install it in the PrestaShop admin panel.
It is possible to migrate store in multiple languages from the following carts: Magento, OpenCart, osCommerce, ThirtyBees, VirtueMart, WooCommerce, X-Cart, xt:Commerce and Zen Cart. To learn more about adding languages to PrestaShop, please read this guide.
Our service migrates taxes, but they may be disabled in the process of data transfer. Please, follow these instructions to enable the taxes.
In order to migrate reviews, you will have to install Prestashop Free product reviews (comments) module.
You can migrate Blogs and Blog Posts from the following platforms: Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. However, this option requires you to install additional paid PrestaBlog (Professional blog) module before the migration starts.
PrestaShop limits product descriptions to 400 and 800 symbols by default. Therefore, you should be aware that Cart2Cart will cut your product descriptions to 400 (for Short Description) and 800 (for Full Description) symbols in order not to ruin the performance of the store. Also, due to the same limitations, Meta Descriptions of categories will be cut to 800 symbols too.
You have two ways to resolve the issue. The first one is to open the root category and save it again. If you have just several categories on your store, you may open each of them and also save. These methods allow updating records in the database and fixing the problem.
Sometimes thumbnails of images that were migrated are not available in the admin panel. To fix the problem, go to your store folder via FTP connection and delete all files from the folder "/img/p", then clean the cache on FTP:
To ensure that all the products, product images, and other information will be displayed correctly, you have to re-index data after migration. Log in to your admin panel go to Preferences -> Search. Press Add missing products to the index button and then Re-build the entire index.
It is recommended to get rid of all the irrelevant data, update the outdated information, exclude duplication on images, etc.
Sometimes in product names and descriptions, merchants use specific letters - umlauts (e.g., "ä") or other symbols (like "ó "). This may cause the wrong migration of words that include such letters. To avoid the issue, try to replace non-standard symbols if possible. It will make the data transfer more convenient.
Even though Cart2Cart doesn't delete any information from your store, we urge our customers to back up all the data to any external device. It should be done before each substantial modification.
In case you're migrating from an open-source platform, find:
When migrating from a hosted cart:
Install the new PrestaShop store. Try not to customize your shopping cart. It allows decreasing the possibility of incorrect work or conflict of different add-ons and modules. You can change the store right after data migration is finished.
In the Source store section, choose your current cart from the popup menu and provide all the necessary credentials (as has been mentioned above).
Select PrestaShop as your Target cart. Copy the store's URL and upload the Connection Bridge.
Additionally, you can watch this video tutorial on Bridge's installation:
Select data types you wish to migrate to your PrestaShop store, for example:
Moreover, consider choosing some of the additional options (some of them have were mentioned above):
Please note that data entities and additional options may vary, since they depend on the type of your Source Cart.
Demo Migration is a free option that lets you transfer a limited number of entities to a new store (in just about 30 minutes). Thus, you will be able to check the performance of our service and take a look at your store on a new cart.
If you are fully satisfied with the results of Demo Migration, it is time to begin the Full Migration of your store to PrestaShop. Just click the "Start Migration" button and get back to doing business, since Cart2Cart doesn't interfere with your store's work. Therefore, you can safely continue selling goods.
After you've been notified of the completion of Full Migration, we recommend you to do the following:
Basically, that's all. Don't hesitate - migrate to PrestaShop and enjoy the new possibilities for the growth of your business. After all, there's no limit to perfection!
Do not hesitate to try out the free Demo and test our service in action!