A Detailed Cart2Cart Review: One the Best Shopping Cart Migration Tools

If you’re reading this Cart2Cart review, then I guess you’re probably not a newbie in the field of online selling. Hence, you must have noticed the speed at which ecommerce tech has been changing of late.

Going by the numerous reviews we’ve done so far, it’s pretty evident that ecommerce is constantly growing, and at an exponential rate. The year 2019 alone has seen a wide range of feature improvements and updates being implemented by various selling platforms, as they try to outdo each other in an industry that’s already extremely competitive.

Well, you could argue that ecommerce platforms are enjoying the advantages that come with superior tools. Fair enough. But, all things considered, online merchants are the biggest beneficiaries here.

Think about it. One day you’re on this platform, loving it and praising its features, then shortly after, you stumble upon a much better shopping cart. One with smarter features that dwarf pretty much everything you’ve been getting from other platforms.

So, let’s be honest. Would you remain faithful to your original platform and ignore all the better options on the market?

I guess not! If you intend to outshine your competitors, then you have no option but to move with the flow. In other words, be prepared to migrate to a much better fit when you discover it.

But, here’s the kicker. People who’ve tried migrating their online stores before know the process is not easy at all. It almost feels like performing brain surgery – it’s time-consuming, challenging, plus technically demanding. And that, of course, means it's certainly not the type of thing you’d be able to handle without the right tech skills.

Well, that was the case until they started introducing tools like Cart2Cart.

Cart2Cart Review – Overview

It might sound like one, but Cart2Cart is not a shopping cart solution. Rather, it’s the type of platform you leverage when you need to migrate from one cart to another.

What does that mean?

Ok, let’s go back to the whole migration thing, and take a minute to critically analyze the process. What do you think makes it painfully cumbersome and challenging?

Yes, you’re right, code and data are the two main problems here. Moving both concurrently from one hosting provider to another requires a lot of effort as well as expertise. And that, for your information, makes it a very costly and risky affair.

A simple code omission or data corruption could potentially put you out of business for some time. Now, imagine the losses you’d potentially incur, not to mention the effort it would take to troubleshoot the problem and restore the website.

Ok, I know what you might be wondering at this point. Don’t ecommerce platforms offer website migration services?

Well, it turns out they do. But, the fact remains, only a few provide this option. In most cases, new users are left to handle their website migration processes themselves.

Such problems ultimately pushed an ecommerce-solutions company called MagneticOne to introduce Cart2Cart in 2009. And for ten years now, the platform has been saving online entrepreneurs all the trouble that comes with site migration. The trick it uses here is simply automating the entire procedure.

You can think of it as a specialized shopping cart migration solution for simplifying the whole operation.

And speaking of which, you should be able to move your website from one ecommerce platform to another without coding a single line. That means you don’t need any technical knowledge here. You can easily proceed without hiring a developer to overlook everything.

Don’t get me wrong though. Cart2Cart doesn’t accommodate just any random website migration. At the moment, it supports migrations between more than 85 platforms.

That’s a limited collection, I have to say. But, on the bright side, at least the list features pretty much all the dominant solutions you’ve heard about, including Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, PrestaShop, X-Cart, CS-Cart, etc- with Magento to Shopify being one of the most popular migrations here.

When you combine their numbers over the years, it turns out tens of thousands of online stores have so far used Cart2Cart to switch between these platforms.

Not bad, not bad at all. But, what exactly do Cart2Cart users get in return?

Well, as we’ve already established, Cart2Cart is all about automating the migration process. The only stuff you’re forced to do manually is registration, as well as specifying your site and its migration options. In total, it only takes three steps to have your site data exported to a new shopping cart.

And the best thing is, you can continue selling throughout the migration process. Cart2Cart doesn’t take your website offline. Everything is kept intact in the foreground as the complex migration operations proceed in the background. That means you could choose to switch platforms mid-way through a high sale season.

The highly technical operations are overlooked by Cart2Cart’s in-house support team, which is made up of highly-experienced professionals. In case of any concerns, you’re free to get in touch with them at any time of the day or night. Cart2Cart guarantees optimal responsiveness as well as quick problem resolution.

Now that sounds like a promising solution. But then again, does Cart2Cart actually have what it takes to effectively support your site migration? And what should you expect when you start using the service?

That’s precisely what this Cart2Cart review is all about. We’ve tried out Cart2Cart a couple of times now, and here’s the comprehensive review of its entire migration procedure, the customer support levels, all the main services, plus its pricing.

Then to top that off, we also reveal the ecommerce platforms supported by Cart2Cart, as well as the corresponding pros and cons of using the service.

Pros and Cons of Cart2Cart

Pros of Cart2Cart 👍

• You don’t need technical skills when you’re working with Cart2Cart. It automatically migrates your online store and its accompanying data from one shopping cart to another without any coding. Even the setup procedure is pleasantly straightforward for all types of users, including newbies.
• You should be able to migrate even an expansive site without installing any software. Cart2Cart is a web-based system that leverages Hetzner servers to power its demanding migrations.
• A single migration instance on Cart2Cart is capable of transferring all the website data and its accompanying entities, including products, categories, orders, and customer details.
• Cart2Cart has a dynamically flexible site migration framework. Apart from full migration, you could pay for partial migration through its Recent Data Migration service, as well as possible remigrations via Migration Insurance.
• Cart2Cart comes with an Estimator that helps you establish your precise migration costs beforehand. The pricing itself is very flexible since it takes into account the volume of data for the transfer.
• Before proceeding with a full migration, Cart2Cart uses its Demo migration feature to show you a preview of how your site will eventually appear when you launch it on the target cart. What’s more, the whole thing is completely free of charge.
• Your online store is systematically moved from one platform to another without experiencing downtime. That means you can maintain your business operations throughout the entire migration process
• Once your site has been migrated, it preserves its original entity structure. Some of the commonly linked entities include images, tags, coupons, multiple stores, blogs, taxes, variants, attributes, reviews, custom fields, CMS pages, categories, customers, orders, products, etc.
• Cart2Cart offers uninterrupted 24/7 customer support across email, phone, and live chat. Its technical support team is very knowledgeable and responsive.
• Cart2Cart manages to transfer large volumes of data fairly quickly. An online store with 5,000 entities, for instance, shouldn’t take the tool more than one hour.
• Cart2Cart supports migrations across more than 80 ecommerce platforms. That means it has something for pretty much everyone- from hosted and self-hosted shopping carts to the dominant market leaders and a couple of lesser-known platform options.
• Cart2Cart has partnerships with 12 of the most renowned ecommerce platforms: Prestashop, Shopify, WooCommerce, 3dcart, Shopware, OpenCart, X-Cart, CS Cart, nopCommerce, Softcube, Loaded 7, and HikaShop.

Cons of Cart2Cart 👎

• The process of setting up a connection between self-hosted platforms might not be very simple for newbies. It involves downloading a zip file and subsequently unpacking its contents into your store’s root folder via FTP.
• With 50% of the full migration price being the minimum rate, the Recent Data Migration service could ultimately cost you more than you had previously anticipated.
• Cart2Cart’s Migration Preview service supports only a handful of shopping carts. You can only preview your online store on eight platforms.

Cart2Cart Review – Ease of Use (How It Works)

Getting Started

To migrate from one platform to another, the first thing you need to do here is signing up. This shouldn’t take you long, especially since Cart2Cart gives you the additional option of proceeding with either your Google or Facebook account.

In case you’re wondering if you have to subscribe to a package to access the system dashboard, the answer is no. Cart2Cart is generous enough to grant you migration setup privileges for free. Payments will only come up after you’ve tweaked the migration settings, right before you unroll the real thing.

In the meantime, you’re free to log into the system, after which you should go straight to the “Create New Migration” button. Clicking on it will reveal a setup interface, on which Cart2Cart requires you to specify your online store’s source cart as well as the corresponding target option.

Hosted vs Self-Hosted Cart Migrations

Now, this is where things get a bit tricky for self-hosted ecommerce platforms like Magento and WooCommerce. Establishing a connection between the source and target carts when you’re dealing with hosted platforms is pretty straightforward. All you need is their respective URLs plus API details.

Hence, the process of moving from, say Shopify to BigCommerce, is only a matter of copy-pasting the relevant platform and website info.

But, when it comes to self-hosted shopping carts, Cart2Cart can only set up a valid link through what it calls a “Connection Bridge”. This is basically a zip file you download from Cart2Cart and subsequently unzip its contents into your website’s root folder using FTP.

Otherwise, you could alternatively give Cart2Cart your store’s FTP credentials and it’ll unpack the connection bridge automatically.

In the end, the bridge is intended to facilitate data transactions during the whole migration process.

Make no mistake though. If you’re planning to migrate between two self-hosted platforms, one connection bridge instance wouldn’t be sufficient for a solid link. Rather, you should apply a connection bridge on both the source cart and your target platform.

Ok, I know how that procedure might sound to a beginner, especially one who hasn’t worked with FTP clients before. It seems complex, but it really isn’t. In fact, it’s almost as simple as downloading and unzipping any other web file. Just a couple of seconds and you’re done.

While you’re at it, you’ll notice that this the only part you’ll need some technical knowledge. Everything else beyond that is a breeze.

Selecting Migration Entities and Additional Options

The subsequent stage, for instance, is all about selecting the specific website entities you’d like to migrate. You just need to define your choices by checking off their boxes from the list of entities displayed by Cart2Cart. Some of the options you’ll see here include products, customers, reviews, categories, orders, taxes, etc. Just the usual stuff you’ve seen on ecommerce sites.

Free Demo Migration

The good stuff doesn’t end there though. It turns out Cart2Cart has more in store for you. And to be more precise, it’ll go ahead and perform a free demo migration to give you a good feel for the final product.

But, get this. The free demo will only move the free entities to your selected target platform, and the entire process should take about half an hour or so.

I guess that should be enough to demonstrate the capabilities that Cart2Cart packs. You could assess the elements on the resultant site to confirm if, indeed, Cart2Cart is the ideal migration tool for your online store.

And if you like what you see, you can proceed to launch a full migration. Not for free though, because the service is charged based on the precise number of entities you plan to migrate, as well as the specific shopping carts involved.

Moving a typical online store with 1,000 products, 500 customers, plus 500 products from BigCommerce to Shopify, for instance, will cost you about $69. Such a migration instance should take about an hour or so on Cart2Cart.

If you’d like to know your figures beforehand, you could get a rough estimate of your store’s total migration cost from Cart2Cart’s pricing page. Just enter your product, customer, plus order numbers and voila! You’ll then be able to budget for everything accordingly.

Cart2Cart Review – Main Services

While migration essentially entails moving a website from one platform to another, site owners tend to take different paths. There are multiple variables involved here, and people usually prefer employing custom parameters, based on their specific needs.

Hence, Cart2Cart chooses to approach the concept of migration quite dynamically. Instead of providing a one-size-fits-all system, it splits migration into a range of services that target different types of users.

They include:

Data Migration Service Packages

The data migration service package is an all-inclusive service that combines technical support with website data transfer.

What does this mean?

Well, for starters, almost everything is handled by Cart2Cart’s professionals. Even the setup procedure itself is performed by the support staff.

And that’s not all. Apart from migration setup, they conduct pre-migration validation, migration results validation, as well as remigrations in case of a problem. Cart2Cart further provides you with a temporary personal account manager who then takes care of your migration settings.

Therefore, this data migration, service is worth considering if you happen to be too busy to make time for your website migration. It lets you focus on running the business while the data transfer processes and their accompanying tweaks are handled by the real experts.

That said, the cheapest data migration service costs $299 and it accommodates 1,000 entities. For larger sites, Cart2Cart allows you to transfer over 60,000 entities at a custom price.

Recent Data Migration Service

Since Cart2Cart’s migration process keeps your site online throughout, you cannot rule out the chances of new entities hitting the source store in the meantime. They could be triggered by, say, new sales, product updates, increased order volume, etc.

So, that begs the question – what happens when new entities roll in after the root data folders have been migrated? Should you pay Cart2Cart again to conduct a fresh full migration?

Now that’s where the Recent Data Migration service comes in. It fundamentally saves you the trouble of remigrating everything to the target platform by focusing only on the source store’s recent data changes. Hence, you get to transfer only specific datasets without affecting the rest.

But, make no mistake. The Recent Data Migration service doesn’t necessarily update your target store’s data by syncing everything with the source store. Rather, it principally introduces new entities based on your selection. Cart2Cart eventually transfers only the datasets you choose.

Now, apart from saving time, the other good thing about this service is its cost-effectiveness. While choosing a second full migration would only double your costs, proceeding with Recent Data Migration translates into 50% cost savings. Yes, that’s right- Cart2Cart will charge you about half the full migration rate to conduct a Recent Data Migration.

It’s worth noting, however, that the 50% reduction rate is not constant. That’s just the minimum fee you should expect to pay. In the end, Cart2Cart might introduce additional charges based on the entities you intend to transfer.

Migration Insurance Service

Migration Insurance Service is meant to act as a backup plan when your online store fails to launch successfully after the data transfer.

Now, there are many possible reasons why problems occasionally develop post-migration. Some websites simply fail to integrate comprehensively with their target carts. Others might face difficulties due to wrongly modified data, or corrupted modules, and so forth. The list is endless.

So, let’s face it. It’s impossible to seal all the potential risk factors. And while Cart2Cart is a reliable migration solution, it can’t possibly predict and prevent every single issue on its supported ecommerce platforms.

Thankfully, however, it provides a clever mitigation option. Its Migration Insurance Service protects you from unforeseen difficulties by giving you the chance to restart the migration process all over again.

The cost itself is about 9-13% of your online store’s total data migration price. The percentage rate you end up paying for the insurance is based on the number of remigration instances. The more you select, the higher the rate goes.

But, here’s the kicker. When it comes to the actual remigration procedure, Cart2Cart doesn’t allow you to introduce options that had not been included in your store’s initial migration setup. And if you insist, expect the platform to charge you separately for each additional option.

Migration Preview Service

Migration becomes necessary when you realize that your online store would do much better with a new shopping cart. Identifying the best target platform for the site, however, might not be that simple.

Have you ever experienced the dilemma of choosing between multiple seemingly-ideal ecommerce platforms?

Yes, I know. It can be pretty confusing, especially if your platform options balance each other out when it comes to feature benefits and drawbacks.

But then get this. Cart2Cart’s Migration Preview service helps you make an informed decision by providing a visual snippet of each platform.

In essence, it gives you the privilege of viewing how your online store would appear on various platforms. Consequently, you should be able to make a selection after keenly analyzing the respective store designs and their accompanying entities on different target shopping carts.

Then guess what? The service itself is completely free of charge. Cart2Cart fundamentally displays each test instance as a migration demo that remains live for up to three days. That gives you sufficient time to assess all the critical parameters using your admin access credentials.

Ultimately, payment only comes in when you choose to proceed with a full migration. Cart2Cart will then give you the chance to tweak your target cart info, after which it’ll apply the resultant charges, before finally executing the actual transfer procedure.

Now, when you come to think of it, the only problem here is that the Migration Preview service supports only a handful of platforms. You only get to choose between seven cart options.

But then again, on the bright side, they all happen to be some of the most dominant shopping carts. So far, you can take advantage of the service if you’re considering BigCommerce, PrestaShop, Magento, X-Cart, WooCommerce, VirtueMart, or OpenCart.

Cart2Cart Review – Supported Ecommerce Platforms

At the moment, Cart2Cart specializes in more than 80 shopping cart platforms.

Some of the notable examples include: 3DCart, AbleCommerce, Amazon Webstore, AmeriCommerce, Actinic, Big Cartel, BigCommerce, ChannelAdvisor, CoreCommerce, CubeCart, CS-Cart, DaWanda, Drupal Commerce, Ecwid, ekmPowershop, ePages, Etsy, Jigoshop, Lemonstand, LiteCart, LightSpeed, Magento, MobiCart, Miva Merchant, Merchium, Mystore.no, nopCommerce, Network Solutions, Premmerce, PrestaShop, OpenCart, osCommerce, Shopify, Shopp, Shopware, Summer Cart, Spark Pay, Squarespace, ThirtyBees, VirtueMart, Volusion, Weebly, Wix, WooCommerce, X-Cart, xt:Commerce, Yahoo Store, and Zoey.

From this list alone, we can agree that Cart2Cart is doing a good job of accommodating all types of online stores. It features both self-hosted and hosted options for startups, solo merchants, small businesses, as well as enterprises.

Cart2Cart Review – Customer Support

Site migration is, admittedly, a very technical process. There are many complex factors that come into play even when you’re transferring a basic website. Hence, it’s critically important for a migration service to offer its users high-level technical support.

And that’s pretty much the case here. Cart2Cart has optimized its customer support system to respond to your concerns in time and in a professional manner.

The staff itself is composed of dynamic teams of experienced web development professionals who know all there is to know about ecommerce web migration. Therefore, you can rely on them to bail you out in case you experience an issue while transferring your site data.

And speaking of which, technical support is accessible 24/7 across multiple channels. More specifically, you should be able to engage them via live chat, email, or phone. The choice is yours.

If you’re getting started, however, you should consider going through the knowledge base before raising a ticket. Cart2Cart offers video tutorials for each of its supported ecommerce platforms, plus a pretty comprehensive FAQ section. Combined, these resources provide all the essential pointers you’d need to get everything up and running.

Then for users who might not be able to perform the migrations themselves, Cart2Cart offers a comprehensive support system through its Data Migration package. You basically get a personal account manager who then handles your data transfer, store installation, migration customization, plus the subsequent validations.

Cart2Cart Review – Pricing

Full Migration Pricing

The cost of a full migration depends on the shopping cart platforms involved, as well as the number of orders, customers, products in your online store.

A standard online store with 500 products, 500 orders, and 1,000 products, for instance, is charged a one-off price of $69 to migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify. And if you throw in all its blogs and blog posts, the cost increases to $128.

Such pricing details can be obtained directly from Cart2Cart’s estimator. It helps you plan accordingly by establishing what you stand to pay in the end.

That said, some of the entities you can transfer via the full migration service include: blog posts (images, post redirects, title, full description, short description, tags, SEO URL, author), reviews (created date, rate, user name, comment, product, title), coupons (name, coupon code, type discount, discount amount), orders (order status, order date, order ID, order products, name, SKU, product price, quantity, subtotal price, discount price, tax price, shipping price, total price, order comments), email, billing address (first name, last name, company, address 1, address 2, country, state, city, Zip code, telephone), shipping address (first name, last name, company, address 1, address 2, country, state, city, Zip Code, telephone).

Then when it comes to customer entities, Cart2Cart transfers: first name, last name, email, billing address (first name, last name, company, address 1, address 2, country, state, city, Zip code, telephone), shipping address (first name, last name, company, address 1, address 2, country, state, city, Zip Code, telephone). Product categories, on the other hand, entail name, product tags, description, status, products SEO URLs, Meta title, and Meta description details.

Then the products themselves are migrated with entities like name, SKU, full description, images in description, status, manufacturer, price, special price, URL, Meta title, Meta description, base image, additional images, quantity, weight, UPC, as well as variants (SKU, attributes, and price).

Data Migration Service Packages Pricing

• Basic Migration Service – For a one-off price of $299, the Basic Migration Service offers migration results validation, 1 remigration within 7 days after full migration, preview of demo migration results, migration setup, pre-migration validation, free additional options, migration customization, a personal account manager, 5 hours of technical support, and migration of up to 1, 000 entities.
• Extended Migration Service – For a one-off price of $549, the Extended Migration Service offers migration results validation, 2 remigrations within 14 days after full migration, preview of demo migration results, migration setup, pre-migration validation, free additional options, migration customization, target cart installation, a personal account manager, 10 hours of technical support, and migration of up to 20,000 entities.
• Premium Migration Service – The Premium Migration Service will cost you $999 and it comes with migration results validation, 3 remigrations within 21 days after full migration, preview of demo migration results, migration setup, pre-migration validation, free additional options, migration customization, target cart installation, a personal account manager, 25 hours of technical support, and migration of up to 60,000 entities.
• Ultimate Migration Service – The Ultimate Migration Service is the most superior package since it goes beyond 60,000 entities. The pricing rate is custom and it comes with migration results validation, 2 remigrations within a month after full migration, preview of demo migration results, migration setup, pre-migration validation, free additional options, migration customization, target cart installation, a personal account manager, more than 25 hours of technical support, and migration of over 60,000 entities.

Who Should Consider Using Cart2Cart?

We can now confirm that Cart2Cart has, indeed, proven to be what it claims. It offers a fully automated migration framework that helps businesses seamlessly move their online stores from one shopping cart to another. The whole thing is controlled from a simple and straightforward interface, which offers a range of dynamic migration services.

Hence, Cart2Cart is the type of solution for anyone running a typical online store. More specifically, it can be leveraged by online merchants, ecommerce startups, small businesses, freelancers, web development agencies, plus a couple of online enterprises. In fact, the bulk of its client base at the moment consists of web development agencies and freelancers.

As the ecommerce industry changes progressively, Cart2Cart continues to provide a straightforward and fast method of switching between over 80 platforms. It saves you time, money, as well as effort.

And now over to you. Do you think Cart2Cart has what it takes to effectively migrate your website?