In today’s fast-paced and continuously evolving web market - the paramount for all online entrepreneurs is to improve their online business and attract more customers to their online shops. Consequently, quite often it happens that they have to leave their current shopping carts in favor of other, more sophisticated ones.

OpenCart and PrestaShop have both established themselves as well-known and reputable software in developing advanced and professionally-looking online stores. When comparing these two ecommerce solutions (according to SimilarTech), it becomes evident that there’s a growing tendency over the last years to move from OpenCart to PrestaShop.

The main points of criticism for OpenCart are:

• extensions and modules might not always work well with one another;
• it is difficult to update inventory without a plugin;
• sometimes it offers a slow checkout process;
• scalability with OpenCart somewhat lacks.

With all that in mind, many OpenCart store owners search for a worthy alternative to run their online business. PrestaShop is often the first option they evaluate when considering replatform to another ecommerce solution.

Why Choose PrestaShop Over OpenCart?

PrestaShop is among the leaders in the eCommerce industry. It comes equipped with dozens of useful features that make it top of choice for merchants all around the globe:

• active and vibrant community;
• excellent support materials;
• user- and budget-friendly;
• highly-customizable;
• strong SEO capabilities;
• high-security standards;
• numerous app/integrations;
• reasonable cost.

In short, both shopping carts provide great possibilities if used in the right context. Using either of them in an appropriate situation can lead to frustrated merchants and unsatisfied customers. To be more specific, OpenCart is a perfect match for starting a small to medium-sized business. However, when the business grows and more functionality is expected - PrestaShop is certainly a better way to go.

How to Migrate OpenCart to PrestaShop?

Bearing all that in mind, here comes a practical part of the post. Generally, transferring an OpenCart store to PrestaShop is a relatively easy task if performed properly. For those unaware, there are 3 main ecommerce migration methods: manual, assisted and automated. The key factor here is your skills, budget and time that you are ready to spend. To cope with the problem, merchants who don’t find scripts and codes to be a nightmare - perform the task manually.

OpenCart to PrestaShop Migration.

Try Out Migration Preview Option

Migration Preview makes it possible to perform demo store data transfer even without having a PrestaShop store installed. In other words, you’re provided with an excellent opportunity to check how products, customers, orders and other OpenCart store data are going to look on PrestaShop.

Prepare OpenCart Store for Migration

The very first step when you start changing something with your store is to make a backup of the database. Backups ensure that you have a plan B in case something goes wrong. Take time to conduct the store data audit in order to have an accurate inventory of all of the OpenCart store data you have (like product details, categories, customers, passwords, orders, reviews, and others). Once done, find all your OpenCart store access details.

Get Your Shopify store Ready

Install your new Shopify new with no additional modifications to it. It is recommended to choose the default theme with no customizations at all (once the migration is completed you’ll be able to select the desired theme). Make sure to calculate the price of your specific migration case with the help of the Migration Estimator.

Transfer OpenCart to PrestaShop Store Data Automatedly

Provide your Source & Target stores info

Specify OpenCart as Source Cart and PrestaShop as Target Cart. When done, enter the URLs of both stores and download and install Connection Bridge.

To observe the process in action, this video tutorial can come in handy for you:

Indicate store data & additional migration options

Following the migration wizard it’s time to select the entities you wish to be imported to PrestaShop (products, customers, orders, manufacturers, reviews, etc.). When done, from the provided list of additional options choose those you consider optimal. For example, the following additional opportunities aim to make your conversion even more seamless:

• “Migrate categories and products SEO URLs” to save all Opencart links structure to the products;
• “Create 301 redirects on your target store after migration” to keep OpenCart products and category URLs working at PrestaShop;
• “Migrate customers’ passwords” options makes it possible for customers to log in your Target store using their Source store credentials;
• “Preserve product/category/customer IDs on Target store” option allows saving the Source store product/category/customer IDs on the Target store after migration.

Test Demo Migration

Now when you have everything ready for replatforming, it is advised to run Demo migration (for free). It provides an excellent opportunity to see now only how the service works, but also how your new PrestaShop store will look.

Launch Full Migration

Being satisfied with the Demo migration results, now it’s time to proceed with the final step - Full Migration. Once you’ve clicked the matching button, all your current OpenCart store entities will be transferred to the new PrestaShop. The process takes approximately several hours to be totally completed (though it depends on the number of transferable data).

Post-Migration Do’s

Now when you have your OpenCart store data totally imported to PrestaShop, there are still some steps that need to be taken to completely finalize the replatforming procedure. Firstly, monitor the store performance for possible issues. Don’t forget to notify your clients about the shopping carts switch and ask them to inform you about any problems. To add any required functionality to the new store you can install extensions/modules that are available at the official resources.