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

A Comprehensive Guide to Transitioning from Sylius to PrestaShop

As your e-commerce business evolves, you might find yourself needing a platform that better aligns with your growth strategy, feature demands, or community support preferences. Migrating your online store is a significant undertaking, but with the right guidance, it can be a seamless transition that enhances your operational efficiency and customer experience. This guide provides a detailed, step-by-step walkthrough for migrating your existing Sylius store to PrestaShop, a robust and widely-used e-commerce platform.

While Sylius offers great flexibility, PrestaShop provides a powerful, feature-rich environment with extensive modules and a large community. Since Sylius isn't directly supported by our automated migration tool, we will leverage its data export capabilities by performing the migration via CSV files, ensuring all your valuable data makes it safely to your new PrestaShop store.

Prerequisites for Migration

Before embarking on your data transfer journey, ensure you have the following in place to guarantee a smooth and successful migration process:

1. PrestaShop Store Setup: You should have a fresh, fully installed, and accessible PrestaShop instance ready. It's crucial that this target store is empty or that you're prepared to clear any existing data.
2. Sylius Data Export: Since Sylius will be acting as a CSV source, you will need to export all your essential store data from Sylius into CSV files. This typically includes:
   • Products (with SKUs, variants, descriptions, images)
   • Product Categories
   • Customer data (names, emails, addresses)
   • Orders (statuses, details)
   • Manufacturers
   • Product Reviews
   • Invoices
   • Taxes
   • CMS Pages
   • Blogs and Blog Posts

   Utilize Sylius's built-in export functionalities or custom scripts to extract this information accurately. Ensure your CSV files are well-structured for easy import.

3. Access Credentials: You will need full admin access to your new PrestaShop store (Admin URL, username, password). For Sylius, you'll need access to generate the CSV files. For more details on credentials, refer to The Short & Essential Guide to Access Credentials for Cart2Cart.
4. Backup Your Stores: Although we are working with a fresh PrestaShop, it's always recommended to back up your Sylius database and files before exporting any data. This safeguard protects your original store from any unforeseen issues. For more information, read How to prepare Source store for migration? and How to prepare Target store for migration?.

Performing the Migration: A Step-by-Step Guide

Follow these steps to migrate your e-commerce data from Sylius (via CSV) to PrestaShop using an automated migration tool:

Step 1: Start Your Migration

Begin by accessing the migration wizard. On the initial screen, you'll typically be presented with options to start a new migration.

Step 2: Connect Your Source Store (Sylius via CSV)

Select 'CSV File to Cart' as your source shopping cart from the dropdown list. You will then be prompted to upload your exported Sylius CSV files. Ensure you upload all relevant files for products, customers, orders, categories, and other entities you wish to transfer. The tool will then process these files to understand your Sylius store's data structure.

Step 3: Connect Your Target Store (PrestaShop)

Next, choose 'PrestaShop' as your target cart from the available options. Provide the Admin URL for your PrestaShop store. To establish a secure connection, you'll need to install the Cart2Cart Universal PrestaShop Migration module.

You have a few options to connect:

• Install Add-on from Marketplace (Recommended): This streamlined method guides you through downloading and installing the necessary PrestaShop module directly from your store's admin area.
• Provide Admin Credentials: You can often provide your PrestaShop admin email and password, allowing the migration tool to automatically upload and configure the connection bridge/module for you.
• Upload Connection Bridge: Alternatively, you can download a connection bridge file, extract the 'bridge2cart' folder, and manually upload it to the root directory of your PrestaShop store via FTP/SFTP. For more on root folders, see What is a root folder and where can I find it?.

Step 4: Select Data Entities to Migrate

At this stage, you'll choose which specific data entities you wish to transfer from your Sylius CSV files to PrestaShop. The supported entities include:

• Products
• Product Categories
• Product Manufacturers
• Product Reviews
• Customers
• Orders
• Invoices
• Taxes
• Stores
• Coupons
• CMS Pages
• Blogs and Blog Posts

You can select all entities with a single click or pick them individually based on your replatforming requirements.

Step 5: Configure Additional Migration Options

Enhance your data transfer by selecting from a range of additional migration options. These options are crucial for preserving data integrity and maintaining your SEO rankings. Consider the following:

• Clear Target Store Data: (Recommended if your PrestaShop isn't completely fresh) This option deletes all existing data on your PrestaShop store before the migration to prevent duplication. Refer to What does the option 'Clear current data on Target store before migration' mean?
• Preserve Product IDs, Order IDs, Customer IDs: Keep your original IDs intact on the new PrestaShop store. This is beneficial for historical data, integrations, and internal records. Learn more at How Preserve IDs options can be used?
• Create 301 SEO URLs: Crucial for maintaining your search engine optimization efforts and link equity. This creates automatic redirects from your old Sylius URLs to the new PrestaShop URLs.
• Migrate Customer Passwords: Ensures your customers can log in to the new store using their existing credentials.
• Migrate Images in Product Descriptions: Important for visual consistency and accurate product representation.
• Create Variants from Attributes: If your Sylius products use attributes to define variants, this option helps recreate them correctly in PrestaShop.

Step 6: Map Data Fields

This step ensures data consistency by mapping specific fields from your Sylius CSV data to their corresponding fields in PrestaShop. Pay close attention to mapping customer groups and order statuses accurately. For example, map 'Pending payment' from Sylius to the equivalent status in PrestaShop.

Step 7: Perform Demo or Full Migration

Once all configurations are set, you have two options:

• Start Free Demo Migration: This allows you to migrate a limited number of entities (e.g., 10-20 products, customers, orders) for free. It's an excellent way to test the migration process, check data accuracy, and ensure everything functions as expected before committing to a full migration.
• Start Full Migration: If the demo migration is satisfactory, proceed with the full data transfer. You'll review the final details, including the total cost and an optional Migration Insurance Plan, which provides additional remigrations if needed. Learn more about How Migration Insurance works? and our Remigration Service.

Post-Migration Steps

After your data has been successfully migrated to PrestaShop, a few crucial post-migration tasks remain to ensure your new store is fully operational and optimized:

1. Thoroughly Test Your New PrestaShop Store:
   • Navigate through the frontend to check product pages, categories, and image displays.
   • Test the entire checkout process from product selection to order confirmation.
   • Verify customer accounts: log in with migrated customer credentials, check order history.
   • Confirm product variants, pricing, and stock levels are correct.
   • Review CMS pages and blog posts for formatting and content accuracy.
2. Configure Theme and Essential Modules: Install your chosen PrestaShop theme and any necessary modules or plugins to replicate the desired functionality and user experience of your previous Sylius store.
3. Set Up Payment and Shipping Methods: Configure your preferred payment gateways and shipping carriers within PrestaShop.
4. Verify SEO and Redirects: If you opted for 301 redirects, test them to ensure old Sylius URLs correctly forward to their new PrestaShop counterparts. Update any hardcoded internal links or external listings (e.g., Google My Business, social media profiles) to reflect your new store's URLs. Submit a new sitemap to search engines.
5. Update DNS Settings: Once you are completely satisfied with your new PrestaShop store, update your domain's DNS records to point to your new PrestaShop hosting. Plan this step carefully to minimize downtime.
6. Go Live and Monitor: Announce your new PrestaShop store to your customers and monitor its performance closely, especially for the first few days, to catch and address any lingering issues promptly.

Migrating from Sylius to PrestaShop, especially with the strategic use of CSV files and a robust migration tool, can be a smooth and rewarding experience. By following this guide, you'll be well on your way to a powerful and optimized e-commerce presence on PrestaShop.