If you're planning to upgrade PrestaShop 1.6 to 1.7 anytime soon, then our post will definitely come in handy. We'll do our best to outline the main benefits of switching to the latest version of the software, point out its new features and possible ways of updating your cart.
Watch our video tutorial to see how easy it is to automatically upgrade PrestaShop store with the help of the Cart2Cart migration tool:
PrestaShop is a freemium open-source platform that is written in the PHP programming language with support for MySQL. It was launched in 2005 in France and currently holds 8th position in the Top 1 Million sites in the Open-Source category. 
New Features of PrestaShop 1.7
PrestaShop 1.7 was released in November 2016 with the motto "Sell faster. Code Better. Create Easier". The main idea of its creators was to make the process of the store's establishment more straightforward and user-friendly. PrestaShop has made a large-scale step forward from PrestaShop 1.6 and introduced the following new features and forward-looking changes:
- Improved way of theme creation and maintenance (including a new default and a starter theme).
- Advanced key user journeys (beginner-friendly onboarding, simple product-creation procedure, and module search).
- Re-organized main menu.
- Enhanced admin interface that is aimed at speeding up the most popular tasks.
- Symfony framework, which helps to strengthen code security and store's performance.
Why Is PrestaShop 1.7 Better Than 1.6?
Main improvements over the previous versions include:
- "Create a product" page got a new interface, faster performance, better-looking shortcuts, and improved way of adding products to the categories.
- Back office navigation was redesigned entirely, which led to the improvement of the UI/UX experience and significantly easier browsing.
- Improvement of the modules page contributed to the better daily management of the modules.
- Prestashop has launched many new beautifully-looking themes, which can be downloaded from the Official Marketplace.
How to Upgrade PrestaShop 1.6 to 1.7?
Upgrading PrestaShop 1.6 to 1.7 is not an easy task since there are significant differences between the oldest versions of the software. So, merchants must be ready to adapt or replace many of the addons (themes, modules). Thus, this process requires at least minimal tech skills or developer's assistance (which can be rather costly). Also, the modern ecommerce world offers business owners a worthy alternative - automated migration service (like Cart2Cart). With the help of this tool, you will be able to upgrade your store to the latest version of PrestaShop without spending much time, effort, and money.
Please note that the upgrade process consists of moving your data from the older version of PrestaShop to the latest one. So, practically, its the migration of data within one specific cart.
In order to understand how to upgrade your PrestaShop with the help of Cart2Cart, we recommend you to watch the following video tutorial:
Also, you can calculate the exact price of the upgrade with the help of our online estimator.
So, if you want to upgrade PrestaShop 1.6 to 1.7, you need to:
Install PrestaShop
Go to the Official Site, download and install the latest version of PrestaShop.
Setup Source and Target Carts
Since you are upgrading your current store, please choose PrestaShop as your Source and Target carts.
Copy stores’ URLs to the corresponding fields, download Connection Bridges and upload them to the root directories. In case you have any questions, please watch our video on Connection Bridge setup:
Choose data and additional options
Cart2Cart migration service helps users to transfer the following data:
- Products
- Product categories
- Manufacturers
- Taxes
- Customers
- Orders
- Coupons
- Reviews
- Blogs/blog posts, etc.
Also, we recommend our clients to consider choosing the following additional options (it's not obligatory):
- Preserve order IDs on Target Store - allows maintaining old order IDs on a new PrestaShop store.
- Create 301 redirects on your target store after migration - helps to create redirects to the new store, therefore preserving SEO. (Please note that this option requires installing an additional SEO module before the data transfer.)
- Migrate customers' passwords - this option also requires an additional Cart2Cart Prestashop Passwords Migration Plugin. Please, find the detailed installation guide here.
Start Demo Migration
Demo migration is an entirely free option that allows users to transfer a limited number of entities to a new store (upgraded version of PrestaShop). In this case, business owners will have the possibility to assess the functionality of our service and check how the upgraded version of their store will look like.
Proceed to Full Migration
After the completion of demo migration, we advise you to check your store, and if everything works well, its time to launch the upgrade PrestaShop 1.6 to 1.7.
Please note that the Cart2Cart migration process doesn't interfere with your store's performance. It keeps working and you can continue selling products. You'll receive an email notification once the full migration is over.
Check out our infographic to get a better understanding of the migration process via Cart2Cart:
List of After-Migration Priorities
Although the upgrade of PrestaShop store has been completed, we highly recommend our clients to do the following:
- Check whether all the data has been transferred correctly and test the performance of the store (e.g., make a few random purchases, open the store's website on different devices/ browsers, etc.)
- Choose a new theme or adapt an existing one.
- Install additional modules, plugins, and extensions to increase your store's functionality.
- Use our Recent Data Migration Service (optionally) in case any new data has occurred on your PrestaShop 1.6 store during or after the upgrade.
Actually, this is it. Now you are equipped with knowledge on how to upgrade PrestaShop 1.6 to 1.7. And remember, it's not enough for your PrestaShop store to be up to date, you have to be up to tomorrow - upgrade with our Cart2Cart service!
December 13, 2024 
