Moving from Shop ify to PrestaShop Need Tips for Handling Thousands of Products?

[markpouse]

Hi everyone,

I run a big online store with thousands of products (electrical accessories, smart home devices, kitchen and home appliances, etc.).

Right now we’re on Shop ify, but we’re seriously considering migrating over to PrestaShop because of the freedom it gives with customization, multi-language support, and control over the catalog. Since we have such a large inventory, I wanted to reach out to this community before we dive in.

Here are the things I’m most concerned about:

• Migrating thousands of SKUs without breaking product attributes, images, and categories.
• Bringing over customer accounts, orders, and history cleanly.
• Making sure SEO rankings stay intact with proper redirects (we’ve worked hard to get organic traffic).
• Keeping the site fast and stable once we’re on PrestaShop, even with such a heavy catalog.

If you’ve made the move from Shop ify -> PrestaShop (especially with a large store), I’d love to hear:

1. What migration tools or modules worked best for you?
2. Did you run into problems with duplicate data or broken URLs?
3. How did you handle testing before going live?
4. Any hosting or performance tuning tips for big catalogs on PrestaShop?

This is a big step for us, and I’d really value the advice of people who’ve already gone through it. Even quick “watch out for this” tips would be super helpful.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Mark Pousee

Edited August 26 by endriu107
removed link (see edit history)

[ComGrafPL]

If you don't wana use external agencies for migration. Take a look on https://addons.prestashop.com/en/data-transfer-backup/27161-migrationpro-shopify-to-prestashop-migration-tool.html

The issue could be with urls, depend how it looks now for you. Nothing google search console cant handle but it can take some time to back with SEO.

Do the internal testing before going live, check order paths etc.

Depend on products numbers consider agency to make the migration. i.e next-cart or cart2cart.

[markpouse]

My main concern is SEO, did you notice any ranking drops after migration, or did redirects + GSC fix it quickly? Also, for a large catalog like mine, do you think it’s safer to go with an agency (Cart2Cart/Next-Cart), or is MigrationPro solid enough if I do thorough testing?

[@diegofrancesco]

Hello markpouse,

for SEO, if the URL structure changes, you must implement redirects to avoid losing indexing and having pages with 404 errors. But maybe you already know this.

[razaro]

Hi @markpouse

 

Your reasons to move from Shopify are valid; in PrestaShop, you can customize a bit more. For example, even if you get a paid module, you still can adjust it. And for some functionality, you may need a custom app or Flow. But for front-end customization, not sure what you are missing. Also while PrestaShop has slightly better multi-language support, there should be decent one in Shopify too. Control over the catalog, well that is true, saw some apps and even browser extension that might help.

 

And for migration, Cart2Cart will do the job.

 

But if you expect that PrestaShop will bring the same features plus those 3 pain issues you have to be resolved, you are wrong. You will get many more issues, from things that just work in Shopify. I do not recommend PrestaShop at all. And see more and more people go the other way around. And for reference, I used the 1.2.5 version of PrestaShop first, a long time ago.

 

[Knowband Plugins]

21 hours ago, markpouse said:

My main concern is SEO, did you notice any ranking drops after migration, or did redirects + GSC fix it quickly? Also, for a large catalog like mine, do you think it’s safer to go with an agency (Cart2Cart/Next-Cart), or is MigrationPro solid enough if I do thorough testing?

If the SEO meta info is the same on the pages & redirection of all the URLS are added correctly, then there shouldn't be any issue.