Ecom­merce migra­tion, not migraines: a rel­a­tive­ly prac­ti­cal guide

The first ques­tion opens up a lot of oth­ers, most of them poten­tial­ly expen­sive and poten­tial­ly very prof­itable. When is it a good idea to change eCom­merce plat­forms? What are the advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of the jump? Is there any way to make the most of the pros — and reduce the impact of the cons — of the migra­tion process?

It is pos­si­ble that the answer to most of these ques­tions is that it depends. The right eCom­merce plat­form for your busi­ness depends on your orga­ni­za­tion’s spe­cif­ic needs, on the plat­form you’re leav­ing behind, on the plat­form you’re con­sid­er­ing mov­ing to (here’s our rec­om­men­da­tion) and on how you plan to han­dle the move. 

In this guide, we cov­er the ques­tions we hear most, and share a few answers based on what we’ve learned from doing this many times — to help you decide if, when, and how to migrate to a plat­form that works for you and not the oth­er way round. Play it, Sam.

How will I know when it’s time to move to a new ecom­merce platform? 

Replat­form­ing becomes a viable option when your cur­rent plat­form starts caus­ing more headaches than it solves, and more fears than it calms.

In a nut­shell, the trig­gers relate to three things — poor per­for­mance, poor scal­a­bil­i­ty, or poor you (high or unpre­dictable costs) — and com­bi­na­tions there­of. Here are the most com­mon scenarios.

Sce­nario 1: You Don’t Bring Me Flowers

The first sce­nario in which it would be a good idea to migrate your eCom­merce site is inad­e­quate per­for­mance. This can man­i­fest in var­i­ous ways and it can be a com­mon issue with lega­cy, mono­lith plat­forms. Some exam­ples include poor cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, inef­fi­cient process­es, dif­fi­cul­ties to han­dle increased traf­fic, slow page load times, out­dat­ed web expe­ri­ences, fre­quent down­time or increased secu­ri­ty threats, a par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal fac­tor that might call for an ecom­merce migra­tion plan to pro­tect your busi­ness and your cus­tomers’ sen­si­tive information.

If your web­site is not func­tion­ing as it should or is unable to keep up with the demands of your busi­ness, replat­form­ing can pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to over­come these limitations.

Migrat­ing to a new eCom­merce plat­form can help improve the over­all per­for­mance of your site, result­ing in a bet­ter expe­ri­ence for your cus­tomers. This can include faster page load times, improved nav­i­ga­tion, and increased secu­ri­ty mea­sures to pro­tect against cyber threats. By address­ing these issues, you can enhance the over­all func­tion­al­i­ty and effi­cien­cy of your web­site, ulti­mate­ly lead­ing to increased sales and cus­tomer satisfaction.

Addi­tion­al­ly, a suc­cess­ful migra­tion can also pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to update the design and user inter­face of your site, giv­ing it a fresh and mod­ern look that can attract new cus­tomers and retain exist­ing ones.

Sce­nario 2: Will you still love me tomorrow?

Anoth­er sce­nario in which replat­form­ing may be a good idea is not relat­ed to what your site is doing now, but to what you may need it to do in the future. 

As cus­tomer needs con­stant­ly evolve, your plat­form should be able to adapt and add new fea­tures to meet those demands. For exam­ple, if your exist­ing solu­tion can­not pro­vide an omnichan­nel sell­ing option or lacks flex­i­bil­i­ty in cus­tomiza­tion, replat­form­ing becomes a strate­gic move to make sure you can meet your evolv­ing requirements.

Flex­i­bil­i­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty are key fea­tures to look for when con­sid­er­ing the best eCom­merce plat­form for your busi­ness, because you don’t want your own plat­form to be the rea­son why your com­pa­ny is unable to grow to its fullest poten­tial. If your cur­rent plat­form is not equipped to sup­port your com­pa­ny’s growth and becomes a hin­drance rather than an enabler, it’s prob­a­bly the right time to explore oth­er options. 

Fur­ther­more, replat­form­ing can also be ben­e­fi­cial if you are look­ing to expand your busi­ness glob­al­ly. Dif­fer­ent regions have dif­fer­ent pay­ment meth­ods, ship­ping reg­u­la­tions, and tax laws, and your cur­rent plat­form may not be able to accom­mo­date these vari­a­tions. This can result in a poor user expe­ri­ence and hin­der your inter­na­tion­al growth. A plat­form with prop­er local­iza­tion and inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion capa­bil­i­ties makes cross-bor­der growth pos­si­ble instead of painful.

Sce­nario 3: Price Tag:

Or over (your) head. A third sce­nario is that your exist­ing solu­tion does what it should, and can there­fore still be called an eCom­merce solu­tion, but at a great cost, or (pos­si­bly) worse, at unfore­see­able costs.

Lega­cy plat­forms can have a high­er TCO (total cost of own­er­ship) than new­er, more stream­lined options, which means you are spend­ing more resources just to keep the site run­ning. High oper­a­tional costs, expen­sive resources, such as ded­i­cat­ed devel­op­ers, and inabil­i­ty to devel­op new fea­tures or updates quick­ly can weigh down your busi­ness and lim­it your abil­i­ty to innovate.

Anoth­er thing to watch out for is hid­den costs, a com­mon down­side of sev­er­al tech­ni­cal­ly ​“free” solu­tions. Main­te­nance costs, expen­sive plu­g­ins, and cus­tomiza­tion that requires high cost devel­op­ment solu­tions can drain your resources. 

An effi­cient plat­form should let you make cus­tom changes, scale your busi­ness, and inno­vate with­out break­ing the bank. If your cur­rent plat­form is caus­ing finan­cial strain, resourc­ing issues, and dif­fi­cul­ties in devel­op­ing new fea­tures or updates when you need them, it’s time to explore alter­na­tive options. Migrat­ing to a bet­ter plat­form can stream­line your oper­a­tions, reduce costs in the long run, and help with the chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with man­ag­ing and main­tain­ing your eCom­merce platform. 

So?

Ulti­mate­ly, an ecom­merce replat­form­ing process is not about giv­ing your site a pure­ly aes­thet­ic makeover but about future-proof­ing and growth-proof­ing your busi­ness. It might be chal­leng­ing, but if you find that your cur­rent plat­form is hin­der­ing your abil­i­ty to scale, make cus­tom changes or address exist­ing prob­lems, and gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, caus­ing more prob­lems than it solves, migrat­ing to a new plat­form is not just a good idea, but an urgent imperative. 

Now we move on to the next ques­tion. Beware, there’s a catch.

What are the pros and cons of chang­ing eCom­merce platforms?

What are the advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of replat­form­ing? The short answer is it depends. The long answer is we’ll need to ask more questions.

As we said ear­li­er, apart from very obvi­ous sce­nar­ios, like replat­form­ing from an inef­fi­cient, out­dat­ed, expen­sive lega­cy sys­tems to a mod­ern, flex­i­ble eCom­merce solu­tion with low­er costs, it’s impos­si­ble to define the pros and cons of replat­form­ing with­out ask­ing oth­er ques­tions first, such as where you are now and why you need to walk out that door. Or with­out con­sid­er­ing what led you to choose the plat­form in the first place and what changed since then. Why aren’t things work­ing (any­more)? Did they change? Did you?

Once I ran to you, now I run from you

Every plat­form has a rea­son peo­ple loved it once. And every plat­form has a rea­son peo­ple leave it even­tu­al­ly. Here’s what we see, grouped by the plat­forms our clients most often migrate from.

Migra­tion from PrestaShop

If you want a ful­ly cus­tomiz­able solu­tion that gives you total con­trol over both design and func­tion­al­i­ty, if you can count on an advanced tech­ni­cal team to imple­ment those cus­tomiza­tions, and if ​“mon­ey is not a prob­lem”, there aren’t many rea­sons for you to con­sid­er migrat­ing from PrestaShop. 

Busi­ness­es that ini­tial­ly choose PrestaShop are usu­al­ly drawn to its open-source nature and the promise of com­plete cus­tomiza­tion. Unlim­it­ed flex­i­bil­i­ty and con­trol sound great, but come at a sig­nif­i­cant cost — in com­plex­i­ty, hid­den expens­es, and ongo­ing main­te­nance challenges.

It’s a bit of a catch-22: using the flex­i­bil­i­ty of open source means increas­ing com­plex­i­ty, which in turn requires exten­sive resources, high­er devel­op­ment costs, and longer imple­men­ta­tion times. The abil­i­ty to add func­tion­al­i­ty is good. The bur­den of nev­er know­ing what might break when you add it is not.

So maybe you don’t need to edit the source code to get cus­tomiza­tion. You can migrate to a plat­form with the most com­mon­ly need­ed core func­tion­al­i­ty baked in, and the flex­i­bil­i­ty to scale the plat­form when spe­cif­ic needs arise. Here’s our sug­ges­tion, com­pared to PrestaShop.

The only worse thing than high costs is unclear costs. Cal­cu­lat­ing all expens­es accu­rate­ly with PrestaShop can be tricky — host­ing, tech­ni­cal sup­port, main­te­nance, devel­op­ment costs, and addi­tion­al exten­sions all add up. If you invest­ed sub­stan­tial devel­op­ment resources on the ini­tial build, and then real­ized that even minor updates require dev resources to imple­ment, and that the more you cus­tomize the hard­er it becomes to man­age ver­sions and patch­es and stay on top of things, you know exact­ly what we are talk­ing about.

PrestaShop can become cum­ber­some to man­age over time. Minor updates break cus­tomiza­tions. Updates requir­ing addi­tion­al devel­op­er resources. Replat­form­ing from PrestaShop doesn’t mean giv­ing up free­dom. On the con­trary, it brings dif­fer­ent kinds of free­dom, that you can actu­al­ly enjoy. 

For exam­ple, free­dom from the tech­ni­cal com­plex­i­ties and unex­pect­ed costs asso­ci­at­ed with open source solu­tions. Also, you won’t spend valu­able resources mak­ing — or wor­ry­ing about — minor tweaks, installing patch­es, updates, putting out fires, just to keep the engines run­ning, so you’ll gain the free­dom to choose what to focus on and where to allo­cate your time and talent.

Migra­tion from WooCommerce

If you’re using WooCom­merce, the pri­ma­ry plu­g­in used to pow­er ecom­merce stores on Word­Press, and con­sid­er­ing it leav­ing behind, you are most like­ly wor­ried about two things: scal­a­bil­i­ty and cost. 

WooCom­merce is not mod­u­lar or built to scale, so large or grow­ing brands that start on WooCom­merce even­tu­al­ly have to replat­form. The fron­tend and back­end share resources, which makes it hard to scale with­out slow­ing down the live store, an issue you will not have with a SaaS solu­tion. This also means dai­ly activ­i­ties of run­ning your store (such as pro­cess­ing orders or run­ning reports can affect the uptime & speed of your live store, which is also not great for your con­ver­sion, SEO, and brand in general.

And then there’s cost, a poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant issue, poten­tial­ly being the oper­a­tive word because the main issue with cost in WooCom­merce is that it’s unclear. Although the plu­g­in is tech­ni­cal­ly free, total cost of own­er­ship is not easy to sort out because of app and devel­op­er costs. Also, mer­chants are respon­si­ble for host­ing and security/​PCI plu­g­ins, reg­u­lar main­te­nance & secu­ri­ty patch­es. This could mean thou­sands of dol­lars in fines, in case of PCI com­pli­ance vio­la­tions, as well as dam­age to your brand reputation. 

WooCom­merce stores also lean heav­i­ly on apps and plu­g­ins (some free, many with instal­la­tion fees plus annu­al paid updates) for core func­tion­al­i­ty, which stacks on top of devel­op­er costs. Set­up can be time-con­sum­ing and exten­sive. Man­ag­ing updates can be costly.

What you gain replat­form­ing from WooCom­merce. Free­dom from the tech­ni­cal bur­dens of self-host­ed solu­tions, so you can focus on your busi­ness’s core oper­a­tions. Access to more native fea­tures for ship­ping, sales tax, pay­ments, prod­uct options, and omnichan­nel sales — less required cus­tomiza­tion, low­er devel­op­er costs. Bet­ter and eas­i­er options to do what you’re already doing, and to start doing what you want to do.

What’s not to like? Well, replat­form­ing is not trivial. 

Migrat­ing to a more effi­cient and scal­able solu­tion may present chal­lenges in data migra­tion and require some adap­ta­tions. Adapt­ing cus­tomiza­tions or themes to the new frame­work, which means eval­u­at­ing whether to repli­cate those cus­tomiza­tions or imple­ment alter­na­tives is one. Also, users and admin­is­tra­tors will need to adapt to the new plat­form, which means you will have to fac­tor the train­ing and learn­ing curve asso­ci­at­ed with the migration.

None of these are sig­nif­i­cant draw­backs if you con­sid­er, as you should, an eCom­merce solu­tion with sol­id train­ing and onboard­ing process­es, and enlist the sup­port of an expe­ri­enced agency to help with the migra­tion. Don’t try this with­out adult supervision.

Migra­tion from Adobe Com­merce (Magen­to 2)

Adobe Com­merce (for­mer­ly Magen­to Com­merce) is enter­prise-grade. Robust, flex­i­ble, B2B-capa­ble at core, with a huge exten­sion ecosys­tem. For enter­prise oper­a­tions with seri­ous tech­ni­cal depth, com­plex cat­a­logs, mul­ti-brand/­mul­ti-region setups, and a roadmap that demands full archi­tec­tur­al con­trol — Magen­to can be the right answer.

But ​“can be” and ​“is” are dif­fer­ent things. And a lot of the mer­chants who land­ed on Magen­to did­n’t need that much plat­form. They need­ed what some­one told them Magen­to would give them.

When you stay. If you have an inter­nal team (or a retained agency) that owns the plat­form day-to-day, if your year­ly TCO sits com­fort­ably inside your P&L, if upgrade projects don’t feel like hostage nego­ti­a­tions, and if the flex­i­bil­i­ty you’re pay­ing for is flex­i­bil­i­ty you’re actu­al­ly using — stay. Magen­to was built for you.

When you leave. The most com­mon rea­sons we see teams migrate away from Magen­to 2:

• Upgrades feel like projects. Every major ver­sion brings a mul­ti-month effort. If you’ve been stuck on an old ver­sion because the upgrade is too expen­sive to pri­or­i­tize, that’s a signal.
• TCO has drift­ed up. Adobe Com­merce licens­ing (Cloud or on-prem) plus host­ing plus the team required to main­tain it adds up. For mer­chants whose com­plex­i­ty has decreased or sta­bi­lized, the bill stops match­ing the value.
• You’re using 20% of what you paid for. Pay­ing enter­prise rates for a mid­mar­ket oper­a­tion is com­mon among com­pa­nies that grew into Magen­to for the wrong rea­sons and nev­er reconsidered.
• Devel­op­ment veloc­i­ty has dropped. When ship­ping a new fea­ture takes a sprint of envi­ron­ment gym­nas­tics before any actu­al work starts, your plat­form is tax­ing your inno­va­tion — and you can mea­sure it.

What you gain replat­form­ing from Magen­to. Depend­ing on where you go, low­er TCO, faster devel­op­ment cycles, eas­i­er upgrades (SaaS removes the upgrade project alto­geth­er), and a team that spends less time on plat­form main­te­nance and more on commerce.

This is a con­ver­sa­tion we have a lot. We’ve run the Magen­to-to-Big­Com­merce migra­tion enough times to have a pat­tern for it. If your Magen­to build is start­ing to cost more than it returns, let’s talk.

Replat­form­ing is the new freedom

It could mean free­dom from the tech­ni­cal com­plex­i­ties and unex­pect­ed costs asso­ci­at­ed with open source solu­tions. Or free­dom from spend­ing valu­able resources on minor tweaks, patch­es, and putting out fires just to keep the engines run­ning. Or the free­dom to choose what to focus on and where to allo­cate your time and your team’s tal­ent. Replat­form­ing can also give you the free­dom to make finan­cial deci­sions with a clear­er under­stand­ing of your total cost of own­er­ship. Free­dom from sur­prise costs. Always a good thing.

It can be a chance to future-proof the busi­ness, reduce costs, and regain veloc­i­ty. What­ev­er plat­form you move to, choose one with sol­id train­ing, good onboard­ing, and sol­id sup­port. And part­ner with an expe­ri­enced team because the dif­fer­ence between a migra­tion that goes well and one that goes cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly is usu­al­ly expe­ri­ence, not price.

If you’re at this point, our B2B eCom­merce Guide cov­ers the archi­tec­ture deci­sions that shape where you should go next. 

Every replat­form­ing we’ve done start­ed with some­one say­ing ​“this is fine” for six months too long. The cost of that delay usu­al­ly dwarfs the cost of the migra­tion itself. If you’re read­ing this guide and rec­og­niz­ing your­self in one of the three sce­nar­ios, that’s the signal.

Give us a call. We’ll tell you whether it’s time, or whether the answer is ​“not yet.”