CommerceTools to PrestaShop Migration - Step-by-Step Guide & Expert Services

Seamlessly Transition Your E-commerce Store from CommerceTools to PrestaShop

In the dynamic world of e-commerce, replatforming your online store is often a strategic move to unlock new features, enhance scalability, or gain more control over your operations. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of migrating your e-commerce store from CommerceTools, an API-first headless platform, to PrestaShop, a powerful, open-source, and self-hosted solution.

While CommerceTools excels in flexibility for composable commerce architectures, PrestaShop offers robust out-of-the-box functionality, a vibrant community, and extensive customization capabilities for merchants seeking a more traditional yet highly adaptable platform. This guide utilizes a structured, step-by-step approach to ensure a smooth data transfer, preserving your valuable customer data, product information, and SEO rankings with minimal downtime.

By following these actionable steps, you'll ensure data integrity and a successful transition, setting your business up for continued growth on your new PrestaShop store.

Prerequisites for a Successful Migration

Before initiating the data migration process, thorough preparation is crucial. Addressing these prerequisites will streamline your transition and help prevent potential issues.

• For Your CommerceTools (Source) Store:
• Data Export: As CommerceTools operates on an API-first, headless architecture and is not directly supported by migration tools via a live bridge, your store's data will need to be exported into a structured CSV file format. This is the primary method for bringing your data from CommerceTools into the migration utility.
• Identify Key Entities: Ensure you have access to export all essential data, including products, product categories, manufacturers, customer records, orders, invoices, taxes, coupons, and CMS pages.
• Data Review: Before export, conduct a thorough audit of your CommerceTools data. Clean up any outdated or redundant information to ensure only relevant data is migrated.
• For more details on preparing your source, refer to our How to prepare Source store for migration? guide.
• For Your PrestaShop (Target) Store:
• Fresh Installation: Install a brand-new instance of PrestaShop. It’s recommended to use a clean installation to avoid conflicts with existing data. PrestaShop supports a wide range of versions for migration, including 0.9.0 up to 1.6.1.0.
• System Requirements: Verify that your hosting environment meets PrestaShop's system requirements for optimal performance after migration.
• Essential Plugin: The migration process to PrestaShop requires the installation of the Cart2Cart Universal PrestaShop Migration module. This plugin facilitates the secure connection and data exchange between your CSV files and your new PrestaShop store.
• Backup Your Store: Even with a fresh installation, it's always wise to perform a full backup of your PrestaShop store's files and database before any major operation.
• For comprehensive guidance on setting up your target store, please see How to prepare Target store for migration?.

Performing the Migration: A Step-by-Step Guide

This section outlines the process of transferring your store data using an automated migration wizard. Each step is designed to be intuitive, guiding you through the configuration of your source and target platforms, data selection, and mapping.

Step 1: Start Your Migration

Begin your migration journey by accessing the migration wizard. You'll typically find options to start a new migration, calculate costs, or seek assistance.

Select the option to start a new migration to proceed with the setup.

Step 2: Source Store Setup (CommerceTools via CSV)

Since CommerceTools data will be provided via CSV files, you will select 'CSV File to Cart' as your source platform in the migration wizard. This step involves uploading your prepared CSV files containing your CommerceTools data.

You will upload the CSV files containing your products, categories, manufacturers, customers, orders, and other essential entities. For a detailed guide on CSV data migration, visit our CSV.File Data Migration service page.

Step 3: Target Store Setup (PrestaShop)

Next, configure your PrestaShop store as the target. You'll need to specify PrestaShop as your target cart and provide its Admin URL. The connection to PrestaShop can be established using a Connection Bridge, which is a secure gateway for data transfer.

There are typically three methods to establish this connection:

1. Automatic Bridge Upload: Provide your PrestaShop admin credentials (admin login, admin password, admin URL). The system will automatically install the Connection Bridge for you. You can learn more about securing your access credentials here.
2. Install Add-on from Marketplace: Download and install the specific Cart2Cart Universal PrestaShop Migration module directly from the marketplace into your PrestaShop admin area.
3. Manual Bridge Upload: Download a connection bridge zip file, extract the 'bridge2cart' folder, and upload it manually to the root directory of your PrestaShop store via FTP/SFTP. For guidance on finding your root folder, consult What is a root folder and where can I find it?.

Once the connection is established, proceed to the next step.

Step 4: Select Data Entities

This crucial step allows you to choose exactly which data entities you wish to transfer from your CommerceTools CSV files to your new PrestaShop store. You can select all available entities or pick specific ones based on your migration needs.

Commonly supported entities for PrestaShop include:

• Products: Including SKUs, variants, images, descriptions, attributes, and product categories.
• Customers: Customer records, billing and shipping addresses, and customer groups.
• Orders: Order history, statuses, order products, and related customer information.
• Manufacturers: Brand information associated with products.
• Product Reviews: Customer reviews and ratings.
• CMS Pages: Informational content pages.
• Taxes: Tax rules and rates.
• Coupons: Discount and promotional codes.

Step 5: Configure Additional Options

Here, you can fine-tune your migration with a range of additional options designed to optimize your new PrestaShop store and preserve critical data attributes.

Key options include:

• Clear Target Store Data: The Clear current data on Target store before migration option is highly recommended for a fresh PrestaShop installation to avoid duplicates.
• Preserve IDs: Options like Preserve Product IDs, Preserve Category IDs, Preserve Orders IDs, and Preserve Customers IDs are vital for maintaining data consistency, especially if you rely on external systems or integrations linked to these IDs.
• SEO URLs & 301 Redirects: Enable `SEO URLs` and `Create 301 SEO URLs` to ensure that your previous page links redirect to the new ones, preserving your SEO rankings and link equity. This is crucial for maintaining web traffic from search engines.
• Password Migration: Migrate customer passwords securely.
• Migrate Invoices: Transfer existing invoice data.
• Migrate Images in Description: Ensure product images embedded in descriptions are transferred.
• Multi-tax allowed: PrestaShop supports multi-tax configurations.

Please note that for PrestaShop migrations, SEO options are typically excluded for blogs.

Step 6: Data Mapping

Data mapping is a critical step that ensures seamless integration of your CommerceTools data with PrestaShop's structure. You will map customer groups and order statuses from your source CSV files to their corresponding equivalents in PrestaShop.

Careful mapping prevents data discrepancies and ensures that your customer segmentation and order processing workflows remain consistent on the new platform.

Step 7: Launch Full Migration

Before launching the full migration, it's highly recommended to run a free demo migration. This allows you to transfer a limited number of entities (e.g., 10 products, 10 customers, 10 orders) to your PrestaShop store, allowing you to preview the results and ensure everything is configured correctly.

Once satisfied with the demo, you can proceed with the full migration. Consider purchasing a Migration Insurance Service, which offers additional remigrations and support, providing peace of mind during your transition. You can learn more about How Migration Insurance works?

Post-Migration Steps

Completing the data transfer is a significant achievement, but the journey doesn't end there. These post-migration steps are essential for ensuring your new PrestaShop store is fully functional, optimized, and ready for your customers.

• Thorough Testing:
• Frontend: Navigate through your PrestaShop store as a customer. Check product pages, categories, search functionality, and the checkout process. Ensure all images, descriptions, and pricing are correct.
• Backend: Verify that customer accounts, order history, inventory levels, and other administrative data are accurate and accessible in your PrestaShop admin panel.
• Configure Payment and Shipping Gateways: Set up and test all your preferred payment methods (e.g., PayPal, Stripe) and shipping options to ensure seamless transactions.
• Install Essential Modules and Themes: Customize your PrestaShop store's appearance and functionality by installing your chosen theme and any necessary modules or extensions.
• Update DNS Records: Once you're confident that your PrestaShop store is fully functional, update your domain's DNS settings to point to your new PrestaShop hosting. This will direct live traffic to your new store.
• SEO Verification: Double-check that all 301 redirects are working correctly to preserve your SEO authority. Submit your new PrestaShop sitemap to Google Search Console and monitor for any crawl errors.
• Conduct a Final Data Review: Use analytics tools to monitor traffic, sales, and user behavior on your new PrestaShop store. Be prepared to address any issues promptly.
• Consider Recent Data Migration: If new orders or customer data accumulate on your old CommerceTools system during the migration window, consider utilizing a Recent Data Migration Service to transfer any newly added information.

If you encounter any challenges or require expert assistance at any stage, do not hesitate to Contact Us. Our team is ready to provide support and ensure your migration to PrestaShop is a resounding success.