Magento to WooCommerce: A Comprehensive Migration Guide

Introduction

The advent of Magento 2 brings a lot of advantages to the table. However, chances are that Magento merchants find it difficult when it comes to sophisticated upgrading process to stay competitive. In addition, Magento Commerce and Magento Commerce Cloud editions charge an incredibly steep cost for store owners to enter the enterprise level. Therefore, rather than leveling their eStores up, some users may prefer to move on another eCommerce platform.

As a matter of fact, there are a variety of platforms with distinctive strengths and incentives for e-merchants to choose from. However, WooCommerce outperforms other competitors to be an optimal alternative to Magento thanks to superior features for users.

Therefore, in the next paragraphs, let’s dive deeper into the reasons why you should migrate to WooCommerce. Then we’ll be providing you with a step-by-step instruction to transfer all business data from Magento to WooCommerce successfully.

Stay tuned!

Enormous advantages of WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a preferable eCommerce platform that allows its users to edit underlying code and customize an online store at a tight budget. In addition, this platform only requires store owners to have a light set of technical skills. This means that even beginners can easily start selling products on WooCommerce.

Without further ado, below are some highlighted features that explain why WooCommerce should be your next destination.

1.You can operate a low-cost store on WooCommerce

With the same open-source nature, both Magento and WooCommerce are totally free to download. However, the expense to create and run a WooCommerce store is much more affordable.

First of all, Magento requires a higher level of technical skills to build and maintain an eCommerce store. Therefore, you probably need to hire Magento developers whose hourly rate varies from $65 to $150 depending on their experience.

In addition, you may need to pay a higher fee to integrate a Magento extension while WooCommerce charges a lower price for an add-on with the same function. Let’s take Xero - an accounting software available on both platforms - as an example. WooCommerce only charges you only $79 to purchase this module because it is developed by the platform itself. Meanwhile, you have to pay $399 to install Xero, which is provided by the third party Magenest, to your Magento store.   

Last but not least, Magento themes are generally more costly than that of WooCommerce. With only $100, you can possess the most expensive theme of WooCommerce. Meanwhile, you have to pay up to $400 for Magento to get a premium template.

2.WooCommerce is accessible for everyone

Source (News - Alert): Unsplash

On the one hand, WooCommerce requires less coding skills, making it possible for beginners and even those who don’t have a firm technical base to build and customize stores. There is a setup wizard that will guide you through every basic step of configuration. Moreover, you can dig into WooCommerce documentation and users community to find solutions for any questions.

On the other hand, Magento users need to have a concrete foundation of technical knowledge to build and maintain their stores. Even the documentation it provides is mainly written for developers with sophisticated programming language.

3.You can exploit WooCommerce’s boundless extension library

As a plugin of WordPress, WooCommerce enables its users to avail more than 55,000 free-of-charge plugins and themes. You can easily filter by categories and select the one that fits business demand, namely, shipping, marketing, store management,... Besides online stores, you can even create any kind of page such as blog, forum, online communities and the like.

Its rival, Magento, also comes with a vast variety of freemium third-parties extensions. They are divided into accounting & finance, marketing, sale, payment & security,.... However, there are only 3800+ extensions and themes available for Magento store owners to choose from. It is a huge difference between Magento and WooCommerce.

Migrate from Magento to WooCommerce with ease

Regardless of what method you choose to migrate from Magento to WooCommerce, you need to make some preparations in advance. First of all, we recommend that you should backup Magento data to significantly reduce the risk of data loss or any possible technical problems while transferring data. In addition, don’t forget to create a WooCommerce store in order to place store entities after the migration.

Basically, you have three ways to switch your online business from Magento to WooCommerce as following:

• Migrate manually: you need to take care of the whole process from exporting Magento data to importing these files to WooCommerce store. The plus point is, your data will be safe from being leaked. Also, you don’t need to be in charge of any fee. Nevertheless, you may have trouble understanding the data structure of these two platforms.
• Hire professionals: You can rest assured that the professionals are better at ensuring platform compatibility. However, they cannot guarantee that there are no unexpected errors because not all experts can understand 100% data structure of two different platforms. Moreover, web agencies and freelancers normally require a high expense to migrate data from one platform to one another (around $50 - $80 per hour). It is even worse when your valuable data is probably in danger of being used for personal purposes as you can’t control the whole process.
• Use an automated data migration tool: This method leaves two other options miles away because you can perform the migration on your own. All the store entities will be automatically, securely transferred to the new store within a couple of hours and at affordable fees. More importantly, your old store keeps operating normally during and after the migration process.

Among all the factors discussed above, using an automated migration tool is the most optimal choice to perform data transfer. If you are in need of migrating from Magento to WooCommerce effortlessly, LitExtension would be a perfect option for you.

LitExtension is the world-leading shopping cart migration expert that flawlessly transfers all the data including products, customers, orders, blogs, reviews, coupons, multiple languages and the like. You can also benefit from more than 10 Additional Options to extend the migration possibilities, namely, Preserve Order IDs on Target (News - Alert) Store, Create the 301 redirects, Migrate SEO URLs,...

Also, they ensure 100% uptime and the highest level of security for your business data. Migrate data with LitExtension is truly a risk-free investment thanks to a 30-day money back guarantee. Therefore, you can totally rest assured that LitExtension is the most reliable option for your migration.

You can visit Trustpilot and FinancesOnline to see how LitExtension customers comment on their service. In the next section, let’s dig into 3 easy steps to migrate from Magento to WooCommerce with LitExtension!

Step 1: Set up migration information

To begin with, you need to login or register a new account on the LitExtension site.

Login or register a LitExtension account

Then, you will see the My Migration page. Hover your mouse to the upper-right corner and click the Create New Migration button. In the setup screen, expand the drop-down list and select Magento as your Source Cart Type. Then, enter your Magento store URL in the blank bar.

Don’t forget to install LitExtension connector because this is a bridge between LitExtension and your Source Store as well as Target Store. All you need to do is download the connector, extract the zip file, and then upload it to Source Store’s root folder.

Set up Source Cart

Repeat the same steps to set up your Target Store WooCommerce

Configure Target Cart information

Step 2: Configure the migration process

In the Configuration page, you are able to select store entities that you want to migrate.

Choose entities you want to migrate

Besides, LitExtension offers you a variety of Additional Options to enhance the quality of the whole process. Most of them are totally free of charge.

Additional Options for Magento to WooCommerce migration

Step 3: Run Full Migration

You can perform a free Demo Migration with a limit of 20 entities to see how the tool would work. Otherwise, tick the Skip Demo Migration checkbox and then hit the button right below to start the Full Migration process.

Full Migration is running

Especially, you don’t have to keep the browser or the network connection while data is transferring from your Magento store to the new one in WooCommerce. Take yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy an automatic shopping cart migration. Once the process is complete, you will receive a notification from LitExtension via registered email.

After successfully migrating from Magento to WooCommerce, it’s time to invest in the new site and quickly introduce your products to more potential customers. Here we suggest a list of 5 must-have things you shouldn’t miss to take full advantage of eCommerce features from your WordPress website.

Being a WooCommerce store owner, you will have a reservoir of modules and extensions to enrich the store's functionalities. You can add plugins right from WooCommerce Extensions Store, or integrate your business with powerful tools provided by other eCommerce service providers, which help you to create and grow your online presence effectively.

Final thought

Through the article, we hope that you have a grasp of the migration process from Magento to WooCommerce with LitExtension, as well as the reasons why WooCommerce can be the best alternative of Magento.

Please note that LitExtension allows you to perform unlimited Recent Data Migration and Smart Update for free within 3 months after the full migration. Therefore, you can update data in bulk and/or transfer newly-appearing entities from your Magento store (during and after the migration) to WooCommerce effortlessly.

Good luck with your migration!

Author bio:

Charon Nguyen is a content marketing executive at LitExtension. Acknowledging the potential of the eCommerce industry, she keeps updating herself with innovations in this field. Her favorite quote is "It is always darkest before the dawn."