X-Cart is commonly used for B2B models or dropshipping. Therefore, if a business is looking for an alternative to its X-Cart online store, it needs a platform that is both flexible and highly scalable – one of the standout names is Magento, also known as Adobe Commerce.
Magento is considered the most powerful e-commerce platform in the world. This is because its extremely complex architecture allows users to:
- Create and manage a wide variety of product types.
- Store and operate large volumes of data.
- Build complex store models such as marketplaces, multistore, and multisite.
Migrating a store from X-Cart to Magento might seem straightforward since Magento supports most data types from X-Cart. The process becomes even easier with the help of Next-Cart’s X-Cart to Magento migration tool. However, before making your decision, it’s essential to understand the migration steps and differences in data structures between the two platforms.
Understanding Key Differences in Data Structures
Products
Magento supports all product types, options, and attributes available in X-Cart. The only difference lies in how products are sold. In addition to one-time fees, X-Cart lets users apply recurring fees via subscription plans. If you want to add this feature in Magento, you will need a third-party module.
Customers
For customers, there is only one notable point: X-Cart supports a Membership feature, allowing users to create memberships like Wholesaler or Retailer to offer distinct pricing and marketing strategies for each customer segment. In Magento, you can create Customer Groups and apply pricing rules to each group. Essentially, this is only a difference in terminology, and functionally both platforms are similar – Magento can even be more flexible.
Order Status
X-Cart uses two fields – Payment Status and Fulfillment Status – to represent payment and fulfillment separately for each order. Magento simplifies this by using a single status field, and you can add custom order statuses as needed. During migration, ensure that order statuses are mapped correctly to match your order-processing workflow.
SEO and URL Structure
The default versions of Magento and X-Cart use the same URL structure for products and categories. Therefore, you only need to ensure that product and category URL paths remain unchanged on Magento to preserve all links (without redirects). Of course, if you customized your X-Cart URL structure, Magento’s URL management system can help you redirect old URLs to new ones.
Regarding SEO data, both platforms support storing and displaying meta titles, meta keywords, and meta descriptions. Additionally, Magento automatically generates structured data markup to make your pages more transparent to search engines.
Migrating from X-Cart to Magento with Next-Cart
Next-Cart’s X-Cart to Magento migration tool is designed to optimize data transfer between websites on these two platforms. You can easily migrate all essential data types in just three simple steps and a few clicks.
1. Set Up Connection
X-Cart to Magento – Setup Connection
First, you need to establish connections between the migration tool and your stores. This allows the tool to fetch data from the X-Cart store and send it to the Magento store:
- X-Cart store: Download the kitconnect package from the migration tool and upload it to your X-Cart root directory via cPanel or FTP.
- Magento store: Download the kitconnect package from the migration tool and upload it to your Magento root or “pub” directory via cPanel, SFTP, or SSH.
Once the connections are set up, click “Next Step” to proceed to the migration configuration step.
2. Configure Migration Settings
X-Cart to Magento – Configuration
In this step, you’ll find three main areas where you can customize how the migration works according to your needs.
Entities Selection
This section allows you to choose the specific types of data you want to migrate. You can migrate all available entities, or select only a few, such as:
- Products
- Categories
- Manufacturers
- Customers
- Orders
- Reviews
Additional Options
Here you’ll find extra options that allow you to refine your migration:
- Continue the previous migration: This lets you transfer only newly added data if a previous migration has already been completed, which is useful for keeping stores in sync.
- Preserve Original IDs: This keeps the original order and customer IDs from your X-Cart store intact in Magento, maintaining consistency in your order and customer management.
- Migrate SEO URLs: This transfers your product and category URL paths from X-Cart to the URL rewrite system in Magento. You’ll only need this if your X-Cart store uses a custom URL structure. For more information on how this works, you can refer to our detailed guide.
Advanced Attributes Mapping
This section contains several critical settings for ensuring your migration goes smoothly:
- Site Mapping: If your Magento installation runs a multisite setup, you can select which site the data should be migrated into.
- Language Mapping: If your X-Cart store uses multiple languages, make sure these languages are correctly configured and carried over to Magento. You can also choose to skip any languages you don’t need.
- Default Attribute Set: Magento allows you to create multiple attribute sets for different product types. Since X-Cart does not have this feature, simply choose a default attribute set for all imported products.
- Default Root Category: For Magento multistore setups, you may have several root categories across different stores. Be sure to select the correct root category corresponding to the store you’re migrating data into.
- Customer Group Mapping: As mentioned earlier, X-Cart’s Memberships work similarly to Magento’s Customer Groups, so you can map them to ensure customers are properly segmented on your Magento site.
- Order Status Mapping: Make sure that all order statuses are properly mapped to maintain a seamless order processing workflow in your new system.
3. Start Migration
X-Cart to Magento – Migration Process
After all configuration is complete, click “Next Step” to begin the migration. The time required will depend on the amount of data in your X-Cart store and may range from a few minutes to several hours. You can monitor the progress on your screen or let it run in the background via the cloud – no need to keep your device open. The tool updates the migration status in real time, so you can check in at any time.
Video Tutorial
The video below provides a detailed walkthrough of the three migration steps from X-Cart to Magento.
Post-Migration Adjustments and Optimization
After your data has been successfully migrated, it’s time to finalize your Magento store with essential configurations, features, and frontend adjustments. These are the final steps in completing your migration.
1. Verify and Organize Data
- Products & Categories: Carefully review your product information, including images, attributes, and options. Make sure all products are correctly linked to their categories and that your category structure remains consistent.
- Customers & Orders: Confirm that each customer is properly linked to their respective orders, and that all order details (status, totals, line item attributes, etc.) are displayed accurately.
- URL Redirects: If you chose to migrate SEO URLs, verify that your 301 redirects are functioning correctly and leading to the appropriate pages on your Magento site.
2. Configure Core Magento Features
- Theme & Design: Choose a theme that matches your brand identity. If you don’t have web development experience, consider hiring a developer to help you customize the look and feel of your storefront.
- Payment Gateways: Replicate your payment configurations from X-Cart and consider adding modern options like Stripe, PayPal, Klarna, or Authorize.Net to give your customers more flexibility at checkout.
- Shipping & Tax Settings: Set up your shipping zones and configure tax rules that align with those regions to ensure accurate shipping charges and compliance.
- Email Notifications: Configure your email settings so that both store admins and customers receive order confirmations, shipping updates, and other essential messages without interruption.
3. Test and Optimize Your Store
- End-to-End Testing: Simulate a full customer shopping experience, from account registration to product selection and checkout, to make sure everything functions smoothly before you officially launch the Magento store.
- Performance Optimization: Magento comes with a built-in caching system to enhance page loading speed for visitors. You can further improve site performance by integrating a content delivery network (CDN).
- Analytics Tools: Integrate Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track user behavior, monitor sales trends, and get insights into your store’s overall performance.
Conclusion
Magento is an incredibly powerful and flexible e-commerce solution, offering limitless scalability. However, its complexity means maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting are more challenging. If you choose Magento as your next platform, ensure you have the technical expertise or a skilled team to manage it effectively.
You don’t need deep technical knowledge to migrate – Next-Cart’s X-Cart to Magento service handles the most complex parts so you can focus on your business. Ready to start your migration? Contact us today!