Here’s a rather interesting fact about the BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration procedure. While the whole process might not be as difficult as you think, it might also not be as simple as it sounds.
Whichever way you look at it, the BigCommerce to WooCommerce data migration process involves many variables and technical considerations, which ultimately influence the overall health of your online business one way or another.
The Complications That Come With BigCommerce To WooCommerce Migration
Now, for starters, there’s the issue of BigCommerce vs WooCommerce. While migrating from BigCommerce to WooCommerce is the main idea here, it’s only natural for a business owner to have this unshakeable feeling that they might actually be making a huge mistake with this move.
Would you be better off if you stuck with BigCommerce and avoided the migration altogether?
You see, BigCommerce is not just some random shopping cart solution. It’s a specialized ecommerce platform that has not only made a name for itself in the digital selling space, but also continues to serve numerous online businesses- ranging from startups and SMEs to large enterprises.
So far, many of these users have praised BigCommerce for its easy to use interface, intuitive website builder, affordable packages, rich array of customizable website templates, dynamic add-ons, and most importantly, the tons of built-in ecommerce tools it comes with.
In short, therefore, BigCommerce seemingly provides everything your business might need. Just enough to keep everything running smoothly for the long haul.
Hence, it’s understandable that you might be having second thoughts about conducting a BigCommerce to WooCommerce data migration. What exactly does your online store stand to gain if you go ahead and migrate BigCommerce to WooCommerce?
Ok, before we get to answers, another thing that complicates the whole process is the lack of a one-click migration tool. Yes, that’s right. Turns out you won’t find a tool that’s capable of automatically migrating your entire ecommerce site from BigCommerce to WooCommerce.
So, what does this mean for online store owners and businesses?
Although we haven’t discovered a one-click tool yet, it’s possible to automatically migrate BigCommerce to WooCommerce. What’s more, you don’t need any special technical skills. It’s only a matter of following a couple of prompts on a simple user-friendly layout.
Not so fast though. I’m not letting you in on this secret just yet. At least not until we’ve established if migrating your online store from BigCommerce to WooCommerce is worth the effort.
In essence, this ultimate BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration guide compares the two ecommerce platforms, and then it explains how you can automatically migrate BigCommerce to WooCommerce using CartCart.
So, without further ado, let’s begin with the first issue- is the BigCommerce to WooCommerce data migration process really necessary?
BigCommerce Drawbacks
BigCommerce is one of the most reliable ecommerce platforms all right, but, as we established in our ultimate BigCommerce Review, it also has its fair share of drawbacks.
Running Costs
If you intend to build, host, and run your ecommerce store on its platform, for instance, you’ll need at least $29.95 a month. All BigCommerce users are charged a monthly rate depending on the types of tools they need, plus their accompanying store sizes.
Well, you could argue that this should be expected for an all-in-one ecommerce platform with features as impressive as BigCommerce. Besides, isn’t $29.95 an amount that a typical online business can afford on a regular basis?
Ok, fair enough. You might have a point there. But, then again, let’s face the facts. The bulk of online stores today start off on a very tight budget. Believe it or not, they cannot afford to spend about $30 every month on hosting alone.
And even if you could, the sad bit about BigCommerce’s $29.95 Standard plan is, it offers limited features while leaving out some of the advanced capabilities like abandoned cart recovery, customer segmentation and filtering, credit card data storage, and custom product filtering.
Now, if you want such extras, upgrading your package to the next level is pretty easy. But then again, you’ll have to pay almost $80 a month.
Then as your business grows, you might have to upgrade yet again and settle for BigCommerce’s Pro plan, which will cost you almost $300 a month.
Ok, I know what you’re probably thinking at this point. That you can possibly avoid the extra costs by rejecting upgrades and operating within the cheap $30 Standard package.
Well, that sounds like a plan. But, it’s not feasible if you’re running a progressively growing business.
Why, you ask?
Well, as it turns out, that the Standard is only available to businesses whose annual revenue is less than $50,000. So, as you expand beyond this level, you’ll have no choice but to upgrade your package.
Then guess what? The running costs don’t end there. Apart from the monthly service subscription costs, you still have to pay for BigCommerce’s themes as well as marketplace apps. The more you customize your ecommerce site, the higher the costs here rise.
Therefore, in a nutshell, there’s simply no way you can possibly escape the charges on BigCommerce, especially if your business is gradually expanding. The running costs are bound to keep increasing.
(You can find out more about the costs from our comprehensive BigCommerce Pricing Guide)
Limited Customization
One of the most outstanding assets on BigCommerce’s toolset is its site builder and theme editor.
If you’ve used it already, then I guess you probably found it to be responsive and flexible. It gives online merchants the power to easily customize their websites without touching a line of code. You get to work on various layout elements as well as tweak multiple appearance settings.
However, the process of customizing your online store doesn’t end there. While the theme editor is all about personalizing your website’s design, BigCommerce offers a host of apps for customizing the platform’s functionalities. It gives you the freedom to introduce extra capabilities by simply embedding and configuring various apps from its app marketplace.
So, what else would you want for customization?
Well, truth is, you need much more than that to customize a growing business. Although a responsive easy-to-use site builder is a neat tool, it can only do so much. Hence, your website is limited to the default customizations that come with the platform.
The BigCommerce App Marketplace, on the other hand, is not any different. While it offers a number of great integrations, they don’t offer the depth or breadth that would support growing businesses for the long haul.
All in all, therefore, you have to seriously consider moving from BigCommerce if you intend to spread your wings further. And of all the possible alternative platforms on the web, WooCommerce is one of the few, if not the only, that perfectly mitigates BigCommerce’s weaknesses without compromising its corresponding strengths.
And what does that mean?
Enter WooCommerce
Unlike BigCommerce, WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce platform that rides on the WordPress platform. And as you probably know already, it comes with a myriad of ecommerce tools and capabilities.
One thing it leaves out, however, is installation charges. Yes, that’s right. WooCommerce won’t cost you even a dime to acquire plus install it.
And that’s not all. It won’t charge you any monthly or yearly usage fees either, since it’s completely free of charge. You just need to pay for a solid WordPress hosting service and you’ll be good to go. (Check out the best WordPress hosting solutions here)
It’s worth noting, however, that you also might find yourself purchasing a couple of website themes and WordPress plugins along the way.
But, don’t get me wrong. Spending your money on such premium extras is optional. There are numerous other free themes and plugins you could adopt instead.
Now, compare that with the hundreds to thousands of dollars BigCommerce charges you every year. Its evident WooCommerce is considerably cheaper for not only small businesses on a budget, but also large well-established enterprises.
That said, another benefit WooCommerce is largely renowned for is unlimited flexibility.
Yes, you read that right. WooCoomerce doesn’t come with any restrictions. Its open-source framework accommodates all types of ecommerce customizations you can think of.
But, there’s just one caveat. You need technical coding skills to rework the underlying code.
That’s why, when you come to think of it, developers usually have a field day here. WooCommerce allows them to extensively configure all the platform components based on their precise needs.
Make no mistake though. WooCommerce doesn’t facilitate developers alone. It happens to also be a paradise for non-coders in its own right.
More specifically, WooCommerce provides a host of user-friendly tools and capabilities that allow you to extensively customize your online store without touching a line of code (read our WooCommerce review for more info).
You could, for instance, come up with an attractive store layout design by combining a WordPress page builder with a relevant ecommerce theme. In fact, there are endless possibilities here since WordPress and WooCommerce come with numerous page builders and thousands of customizable themes.
And that’s not all. You could also hunt for compatible themes from third-party theme marketplaces. WooCommerce is supported by a large community of developers and designers, who continue to drop hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of new theme options by the day.
What’s more, this open-source platform also boasts of an extensive range of pre-built plugins. And while BigCommerce supports only a handful of apps, WooCommerce is compatible with thousands of plugins and extensions. This gives you the benefit of transforming your store whichever way you prefer.
Now, when you cumulatively consider all these factors, WooCommerce proves to be a much better platform for growing businesses.
So, how exactly can you migrate BigCommerce to WooCommerce?
Your BigCommerce To WooCommerce Data Migration Options
Based on my experience with these two platforms, I can confirm that there are many approaches you could take to migrate your BigCommerce store to WooCommerce.
But, for the sake of simplicity, they can all be summarized into three BigCommerce to WooCommerce data migration options:
Manual BigCommerce To WooCommerce Migration
By now, I bet you can guess what this method entails since the name itself is self-explanatory.
In essence, you systematically move your online store by getting your hands dirty and diving deep into each platform’s database. This process involves a lot of technical configurations as you transfer every single bit of data from BigCommerce, and subsequently rebuild and deploy your online store on WooCommerce.
Well, the good thing is, such an approach gives you unrestricted control privileges. But then again, it doesn’t sound like fun at all.
Why is that?
First off, it requires a lot of technical expertise. And I’m not talking about general coding. You need to know exactly how to work on both BigCommerce and WooCommerce.
Plus, you have to be extremely patient throughout the process. It’ll probably take you days to transfer the data bit by bit with surgical precision.
Otherwise, rushing through a manual migration process could result in numerous errors that might be detrimental to your online business.
Assisted BigCommerce To WooCommerce Migration
This is just another manual migration procedure. But, instead of conducting it yourself, you hire an expert or a professional agency to handle everything.
Now, the best thing about this is, it saves you the trouble of painstakingly migrating data between the two platforms. So, of course, you won’t need any technical skills or expertise.
The professionals are the ones who'll be responsible for exporting data from BigCommerce, importing everything onto your WooCommerce platform, and then reconstructing the entire website.
However, because of the intricacies involved here, professionals typically charge site owners a tidy sum.
Automated BigCommerce To WooCommerce Migration
Automated BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration is the opposite of the manual data transfer process.
And no, once again, we’re not talking about automatic one-click BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration. Rather, most of the automatic tools on the web require you to configure online stores on both platforms before proceeding.
Ok, not bad. But, do you need any technical skills here?
Well, to tell you the truth, some of these tools are built precisely for web developers. So, the answer is yes. Sadly, you might possibly need some level of technical knowledge and skill to work with them.
Not all of them though. Thankfully, there’s hope when you choose to leverage a tool like Cart2Cart.
You see, unlike most of its competitors, Cart2Cart can be configured without any technical skills. It comes with an intuitive, easy to use migration wizard that should take you only 5 or so quick steps to set up a full automatic BigCommerce to WooCommerce data migration.
That’s one of the principal reasons why, of all the BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration tools I’ve sampled in the past, I settle for Cart2Cart as the best option for this tutorial.
And if you think it’s not good enough, here’s a detailed explanation of why you might want to proceed with Cart2Cart…
Why Use Cart2Cart to Migrate BigCommerce to WooCommerce?
Well, for starters, Cart2Cart isn’t just some random tool in a pool of many automated migration options you could use. Not at all.
Instead, Cart2Cart is an extensive well-seasoned automated migration software that goes beyond BigCommerce and WooCommerce. In essence, it facilitates the transfer of store entities like categories, customers, order history, orders, and products across more than 80 shopping carts and ecommerce platforms.
Hence, you can think of it as the mother of all automated ecommerce platform migration processes. Shopify, Magento, OpenCart, 3dcart, PrestaShop, you name it- all the big brands are supported by this small yet powerful solution.
So, in other words, you should be able to move your online store between tens of platforms. Not just BigCommerce and WooCommerce. And in case you’re wondering, even the inverse is possible. You can easily migrate WooCommerce to BigCommerce with Cart2Cart’s automated system. But, we’ll talk about the details later.
In the meantime, let’s focus on the BigCommerce to WooCommerce data migration process. And so far, we’ve established that Cart2Cart packs impressive industry experience and an easy-to-use interface. But is that all?
Nope. And not by a long shot.
You see, another reason why Cart2Cart is increasingly popular is, it comes free of charge. It won’t charge you even a dime to fire it up and set up your BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration.
As a matter of fact, its generosity doesn’t stop there. It goes ahead and carries out a free demo migration of your actual online store from BigCommerce to WooCommerce. The only thing is, this demo process doesn’t transfer all the store entities. It just moves the essentials so you get a feel of what the whole migration process is all about.
Now, I guess that begs the question – what’s the catch when you proceed with a full BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration?
Well, a complete data transfer process, as you’ve probably guessed already, isn't free at all. And neither is it costly. You’ll end up paying a reasonably flexible rate depending on the volume of entities you’d like to migrate. And no, the total cost doesn’t come anywhere close to hiring a professional web development agency.
Then get this. It turns out you won’t lose any sales either. Cart2Cart is built to migrate BigCommerce to WooCommerce without any downtime. That means your ecommerce store stays up the whole time, allowing you to sell your stuff and conduct transactions seamlessly.
However, while that leaves Cart2Cart with all the time in the world to transfer stuff, it doesn’t take long. A full migration cycle of a regular online store should be complete in only a matter of hours.
Consider, for instance, a BigCommerce online shop with about 1,000 products along with 500 orders and 500 customer profiles. Cart2Cart estimates that it’ll take less than 3 hours to migrate all that to WooCommerce, and the entire process will cost you $69, give or take.
So, it’s not only cheaper than assisted migration, but also considerably faster and much more accurate.
Meanwhile, despite its precision and impressive track record, Cart2Cart places a team of tech agents on standby round-the-clock to assist you in case of any difficulties. Customer support shifts here run 24/7 because the company seemingly values your time.
Another thing you can bet on is the security of your information. Since data is particularly vulnerable to breaches during transfer, Cart2Cart employs multiple security measures to protect everything against all potential threats.
Your entire BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration procedure, to begin with, is secured within a separate dedicated Hetzner server. Then during the actual migration process, the data is additionally protected with 128-bit SSL encryption, plus HTTPS protocol.
And if you’re worried about the possible internal threats, Cart2Cart assures its users that only its authorized agents have access to the migration credentials. Additionally, when the whole migration is complete, all the records are deleted accordingly.
Therefore, all things considered, Cart2Cart seems like a tool worth trying out for your BigCommerce to WooCommerce store migration. Besides, if you check various user review forums, you’ll notice that Cart2Cart continues to attract good ratings from its past users.
Now, on that note, let’s now go through all the steps of migrating your online store from BigCommerce to WooCommerce with Cart2Cart. Or, in other words, here’s how to automatically migrate BigCommerce to Woocommerce…
BigCommerce to WooCommerce Migration Process With Cart2Cart
Pre-migration Task 1: Backup Your BigCommerce Online Store
While Cart2Cart has a solid track record and combines multiple security measures, there’s still a slim chance that things may not finally pan out as you had planned. So, you need to backup all your BigCommerce online store’s data before beginning the migration procedure.
However, you’re allowed to skip this step if you haven’t made any changes to your site since its most recent automatic BigCommerce system backup. But if you have, you can go ahead and perform an on-demand backup of all your data before proceeding.
Pre-migration Task 2: Create Your WooCommerce Store
Remember you’ll be migrating to WooCommerce?
Well, then you need a WooCommerce target store to move to. That, in short, means you have to create an ideal WooCommerce website before everything.
Now, the first step here is, of course, finding yourself a perfect WooCommerce hosting solution. Luckily for you, we’ve covered The Top 5 WordPress Hosting Services, The Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers, plus The Best Cheap WordPress Hosting Providers. You can use these detailed guides to identify and compare various well-performing options.
And once you find an ideal one, you’ll have to install the WordPress platform before proceeding with WooCommerce.
When WordPress is up and running, you should go to the WordPress plugin section, search for WooCommerce, install it, and then activate the plugin.
The procedure doesn’t end there though. That’s only the first part. The next one entails setting up the online store itself from the WooCommerce section of your WordPress dashboard. Fortunately, this should be simple and straightforward as WooCommerce and WordPress are both pleasantly easy to use.
But, while you’re at it, don’t be bothered by the plain WooCommerce online store design. Customization at this point is not necessary at all.
As a matter of fact, scratch that- try not to customize anything here. Yes, I mean just that- forget about all the fancy themes you’d like to add for now. The closer your WooCommerce store is to the default style, the better.
And why am I saying so?
Well, the simple reason is, Cart2Cart is built to import and overlay the data onto a blank version of your target store. So, avoid the possible complications that may arise from an excessively personalized store.
In the meantime, users can also take advantage of the Migration Preview service to check how products, customers, orders and other elements from their BigCommerce shop are going to appear on WooCommerce.
Step 1: Create a New Cart2Cart Account
With your WooCommerce store up and running, you can now proceed to the Cart2Cart main site on https://www.shopping-cart-migration.com/ to kickstart the data transfer process. And while the home page is good enough for a beginner, you might want to focus specifically on the BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration page. It provides helpful insights into the whole process.
Take the time to study everything, down to the last detail. All the info here will come in handy during the migration procedure.
You should also consider running your BigCommerce store’s figures through Cart2Cart’s estimator to get an idea of what you mind end up paying, plus the expected migration duration.
Now, when you’re done with the basics, you can go ahead and set up a new Cart2Cart account for free. The system allows you to either register afresh with your personal details, or simply proceed with your Google or Facebook account credentials.
Whichever you choose, the system will automatically direct you to the main Cart2Cart dashboard, from where you should click on “Create Migration” to kickstart the process.
Step 2: Enter Your Source Cart Details and Enter the API Details
The first window in Cart2Cart’s migration wizard requires you to type in your BigCommerce store’s details.
Now, for the details, start by choosing BigCommerce as your specific source cart from the default list of platform options. You should then enter your BigCommerce store’s domain on the Source Cart URL field.
Since BigCommerce is an API-based platform, Cart2Cart will subsequently require you to set an API connection. You can do this by typing in your BigCommerce username on the available field, followed by your BigCommerce store’s API credentials (the API Access Token and the API path).
And for the sake of clarity, you should be able to get these API details from your BigCommerce control panel. Just find your way to the Advanced Settings area, then go to API Accounts, and click on Create API Account.
Once you gain access to the Create API Account area, type in a name for the integration or app corresponding to your account, then copy the BigCommerce API path and paste it to your Cart2Cart migration wizard.
The process doesn’t end there though. That’s only the first part.
Next, you need to proceed to BigCommerce’s OAuth Scopes area. This is where you configure all the API permissions and resources that are critical to your integration. So, just apply Modify on everything and click Save.
BigCommerce will then display a pop-up, from where you should copy your API credentials (Client ID plus Access Token), and paste all the details to the respective fields on your Cart2Cart migration window.
Step 3: Enter Your Target Store Details
Scroll past the source cart section and proceed to the target store area, on which you should repeat the same store detailing procedure.
But, since WooCommerce is the destination platform, pick it as your Target Store, and then type in the corresponding store’s URL on the adjacent field.
Then when it comes to the connection bridge, it’s worth noting that the current version of Cart2Cart saves you the trouble of setting up everything manually. That means you don’t have to download and then paste the bridge file to your WooCommerce store.
Rather, you can rely on the Cart2Cart WooCommerce plugin to handle that for you. Simply install it on your store, provide the required details, and proceed to the next step.
Step 4: Select The Store Entities You’d Like To Move
Choosing entities, to begin with, is all about specifying the particular website components you’d like to migrate from your BigCommerce store to the subsequent WooCommerce store.
And the good thing about Cart2Cart is, it’s flexible enough to accommodate all the essential ecommerce elements, plus their accompanying attributes. You just need to click on the All Entities checkbox and the system will prepare to migrate the following:
- Products: Quantity, stock availability, manage stock, backorder, base image, thumbnail image, additional images, variants (SKU, weight, attributes, quantity, images, price, special price, attributes (name, values) , custom options (drop-down, radio buttons, checkbox, multiple select, date, text field, text area, time, date and time, file), related products, product tags, up-sells, cross-sells, weight, URL, meta title, meta keywords, meta description, price, special price, product name, SKU, short description, full description, status, manufacturer, tax class, and sort order in the category.
- Product Categories: Image, thumbnail image, URL, name, description, status, meta title, meta description, and meta keywords.
- Customers: Customer ID, first name, last name, email, customer group, newsletter, gender, date of birth, passwords, created date, billing address (company, address 1, address 2, country, state, city, zip code, telephone, fax), and shipping address (company, address 1, address 2, country, state, city, zip code, telephone, fax).
- Orders: Customer name, email, billing address (company, address 1, address 2, country, state, city, zip code, telephone, fax ), shipment, order ID, order date, tax price, total price, order comments, order status, order products (name, SKU, option), product price, quantity, subtotal price, and discount price.
- Shipping: Shipping address ( company, address 1, address 2, country, state, city, zip code, telephone and fax.
- Blog Posts: Images, status, post redirects, SEO URL, tags, short description, full description, title.
- Taxes: Tax class (name), tax rates (country, state, percent), and tax rules (tax class, tax rate).
- Manufacturers: Name and image.
- Reviews: Created date, status, rate, user name, product, and comment.
- Coupons: Name, description, status, coupon code, coupon date, customer groups, uses per coupon, uses per customer, type discount, and discount amount.
Step 5: Specify The Additional Migration Options
Apart from the store entities, Cart2Cart gives you additional migration options in case you’d like to customize your BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration further.
You can, for instance, have the system change the product quantity to 100 on your WooCommerce store, or maybe migrate images from product descriptions, categories descriptions and blog posts description.
It’s also possible to automatically strip HTML from categories, product names and descriptions, preserve order IDs on your WooCommerce store, create the 301 redirects to your WooCommerce store after migration, migrate categories and products SEO URLs, skip product thumbnail images migration, plus clear current data on WooCommerce before migration.
What you choose here depends on how you’d want your WooCommerce store to appear and run.
However, here’s the rub- most of the additional options here come at a price. Cart2Cart treats them as some sort of add-ons that you have to purchase if you want to customize your migration process.
So, you might want to go light on them if you’re on a budget. Besides, you’ll ultimately get the chance to customize your new store in detail when the migration is complete.
Step 6: Run a Free Demo Migration
Cart2Cart’s generous free demo migration offer doesn’t target only the prospective signups who might need additional convincing. The company has carefully developed it to help even its bonafide users as they set up an actual BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration.
More specifically, the goal here is to give you a general idea of how the target store will appear once the migration process is complete. Therefore, it’s not advisable to skip the demo migration. After all, it’s completely free of charge and the whole transfer process should take approximately 30 minutes, give or take.
Another thing you’ll notice about the free demo migration is that Cart2Cart limits its entities. No worries though, as the attributes it’ll migrate should be enough for a thorough analysis of expected results.
And when it comes to that, pay very close attention to the essentials- assess the overall store layout, the relationships between the entities and various attributes, as well as the front-end and back-end functionalities, etc.
If everything seems solid and organized, you can confidently proceed to the full migration step.
Step 7: Conduct a Full BigCommerce To WooCommerce Migration
Considering this is the final step, you should expect Cart2Cart to bill you accordingly before executing the actual data migration.
That said, the total cost, as you’ll observe, reflects the cumulative amount of entities as well as the respective additional options you’ve chosen to customize your BigCommerce to WooCommerce migration.
But, if you’re the type that always takes extra precaution, then I’d advise you to additionally consider purchasing Migration Insurance at this stage. It might bump up your costs all right, but it’s certainly worth every penny. In case things go south on your part and you happen to leave out some of the store data, the insurance will give you the chance to remigrate your stuff at a minimal cost. Otherwise, you could alternatively rely on the Recent Data Migration service to transfer any supplementary data that might have been added to the store during the migration process.
Moving on, remember to double-check all your selection before hitting the Start Full Migration button. Go through all your entities, confirm the source and target cart details, and then review the additional options.
If everything seems okay, you can go ahead and initiate the full migration. Cart2Cart will then take it from there and migrate BigCommerce to WooCommerce on your behalf. You can even close the window and wait for an email alert once the process is complete. The choice is yours.
Over To You
With your data fully transferred from BigCommerce to your WooCommerce store, you should be able to customize your new website more extensively.
But, before you embark on that, take the time to comprehensively analyze everything on the new WooCommerce store. Cart2Cart’s customer support team will be on standby to assist you accordingly in case of any errors or omissions.
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