Matrixify Shopify: Advanced Import and Export Solutions

Cart2Cart vs Matrixify – These shopping cart migration tools are designed to help online store owners migrate their eCommerce websites from their current platform to a different provider. Think – product images, descriptions, order details, customer information, shipping addresses, payment details, etc.

While Cart2Cart and Matrixify might serve the same basic function, the capabilities of the two apps are worlds apart. Which of the two is better for your eCommerce migration?

Cart2Cart vs Matrixify: General Information

Cart2Cart

Founded in 2009, Cart2Cart has been in the eCommerce migration space for over a decade and was the first ever automated shopping cart migration tool developed. While the years that followed saw a proliferation of online store migration tools, Cart2Cart has maintained its market share dominance, making it a popular choice for store owners worldwide, and with good reason.

Aside from its easy three-step migration process, the one thing that sets Cart2Cart apart from other eCommerce providers in the industry is that it is the only migration tool that supports all the existing eCommerce providers in the market. Whether you're looking to migrate your online store to or from Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Magento, BigCommerce, or any other platform, Cart2Cart has got you covered.

Its migration process is remarkably fast, efficient, and accurate. The data transfer wizard is easy to use, allowing users to move their online stores without writing a single line of code.

You don’t have to worry about downtime, either. Unlike other Cart2Cart competitors, its migration process takes place entirely on the backend and does not take your online store offline. Your storefront stays intact, and customers can keep browsing your products and shopping without disrupting their user experience.

Matrixify

Matrixify (formerly Excelify) is a shopping cart migration app designed to help online store owners export and import data. However, unlike Cart2Cart, whose end-to-end migration process is fully automated and supports all eCommerce providers on the market, Matrixify is only built to support Shopify. It means you can use the app to import store data to Excel, Google Sheets, and CSV files from other locations to Shopify or export data from Shopify to other locations.

While Matrixify is a solid tool for Shopify store migration, its major limitation lies in the fact that you cannot use it to migrate to or from other shopping cart providers.

Functionality

Cart2Cart

Being one of the oldest and most sophisticated shopping cart migration tools on the market today, Cart2Cart has a suite of functionalities that are nothing short of impressive.

For starters, its migration wizard is highly intuitive and user-friendly. Online store owners don't need any technical know-how or coding skills to migrate their shopping carts from their existing providers to a new eCommerce platform. With Cart2Cart, store migration is an easy three-step process:

1. Connect your Source cart from your existing eCommerce provider to your Target cart in what is about to become your new shopping cart provider. You’ll find all compatible eCommerce platform providers in the drop-down list on the website wizard.
2. Next, enter the URLs of your Source and Target carts, choose the data entities you wish to migrate to your new store, and specify any add-ons you might want to include to customize the migration to your business needs.
3. Finally, run the free demo to get a feel for how the migration tool works. If you're happy with the results, you can launch a full migration to transfer all your store data from your existing store to the new one.

Users can run unlimited free demos to ensure the migration results they get are what they expect. The service’s free preview function is handy for viewing your new store's appearance before it goes live.

The speed of data transfer is also unmatched. Transferring around 5,000 data entities takes roughly an hour to complete with 100% uptime of the current live site. Any customer shopping on your online store while the migration is going on can complete their purchase without downtime or interruptions to their browsing and shopping experience. These new transactions will also be migrated, so you don’t need to worry about anything getting left behind. Cart2Cart migration has no impact on the functionality of your existing site.

Matrixify

Matrixify’s core functionality is built around Excel, Google Sheets, CSV files, and Shopify. This shopping cart migration tool requires you to download the data you wish to migrate, save it in an Excel, Google Sheets, or CSV file, and then upload it to Shopify.

The same thing applies when migrating from Shopify to another eCommerce platform. You must also download your Shopify store data and save it in an Excel, Google Sheets, or CSV file before uploading it to a different platform.

The whole process can be summed up as follows when exporting store data from Shopify:

1. On the Matrixify home page, select “New Export” and configure it with your preferred presets specifying the columns and sheets you wish to export.
2. Next, click the drop-down list under the "Format" section to choose your desired export format from Excel, Google Sheets, or CSV file type.
3. Go to “Select Sheets” and choose the data entities you wish to export.
4. Next, open the entity sheet by clicking it to display the field groups you can export. Select your desired group and choose the fields/columns you wish to export.
5. Open the section labeled “Customize Columns” to customize how the columns you selected in the previous step will be exported.
6. Use the “Filters” option to specify the data you want to export and then select “Set” to apply your preferences.
7. Specify any additional options you might want to incorporate into the export, such as scheduling it to run on a specific date and time or setting it to repeat the export process periodically.
8. Finally, initiate the export. Once complete, you can view a count of the total items you have in your store and compare it against the actual number of exported items.

Once this data is saved in your preferred format (Excel, Google Sheets, or CSV), you can upload it to your new eCommerce platform. A similar process applies if you migrate your store from a different provider to Shopify.

Matrixify’s shopping cart migration process presents some limitations.

For one thing, unlike Cart2Cart, the app’s end-to-end procedure is not fully automated, and as you can see from the steps above, the process is long, tedious, and requires some level of technical expertise. Store owners must first download their store data in CSV format before uploading it to Shopify (and vice-versa).

There’s also the fact that Matrixify is only compatible with Shopify and only supports a limited number of eCommerce platforms to and from which you can migrate your online store (Magento, Lightspeed, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce). If your digital store is hosted on an eCommerce platform other than the four specified here, Matrixify will not work.

If you're running multiple Shopify stores, the app automatically syncs your information and backup and can schedule auto-repeat file transfers if required.

If we had to pick a winner as far as overall functionality goes, it would no doubt be Cart2Cart.

Supported Entities

Cart2Cart

Cart2Cart, as a solution, is designed to help store owners migrate their eCommerce websites from their current platform to a different one. The process is fully automated, eliminating the need to transfer individual data entities manually. The question then becomes, what data can Cart2Cart migrate?

Here’s a comprehensive list of the supported entities:

• Product Attributes
• Product Images
• Product Variants
• Products
• Related Products
• Reviews
• Orders
• Order Statuses
• Customers
• Manufacturers
• Categories
• Category Images
• Coupons
• Blogs / Blog Posts
• CMS Pages
• Multiple Languages
• Multistore data
• Taxes

It is worth noting that while Cart2Cart provides the architectural framework required to support these entities, the actual fields you can migrate ultimately depend on the Source and Target carts. You can view the full list of supported entities for each shopping cart on their respective pages as the migration wizard guides you through each step.

As impressive as Cart2Cart’s overall capabilities are compared to the competition, there are some entities you will have to migrate yourself once the automated transfer completes, depending on your Source and Target carts. For instance:

• SEO data: While Cart2Cart does not support the migration of SEO data such as product and category URLs for all eCommerce platforms, the option is available for some platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Prestashop, OpenCart, and more. That said, you will still have to implement 301 redirects, add a custom 404-error page, and conduct an SEO audit of your new store to maintain or improve your position on search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Customer passwords: Cart2Cart provides a “migrate customers’ passwords” option, albeit for the shopping carts that support it. Depending on the eCommerce platform you're migrating to or from, the login credentials and corresponding accounts for your existing customers will be preserved, saving your customers the hassle of creating new ones. 
• Custom data entities: All eCommerce platforms share some basic data entities, which are the same across the board. However, each platform may have some entities that aren’t common to the rest and vice-versa. These include, but are not limited to, news and updates, customer testimonials, and other content types. If you wish to replicate non-standard entities on your new store, you must implement them manually since they will not be automatically migrated.

Matrixify

Matrixify’s supported entities are as follows:

• Payouts
• Products
• Custom Collections
• Smart Collections
• Orders
• Draft Orders
• Customers
• Discounts
• Activity
• Blog Posts
• Files
• Metaobjects
• Pages
• Redirects
• Shops

At first glance, Matrixify and Cart2Cart’s list of supported entities look similar, and for the most part, they are. Upon closer inspection, however, it is clear that Cart2Cart supports more entities, allowing users to export more data fields. For instance, Product Attributes, Product Images, Product Variants, Reviews, Order Statuses, Manufacturers, and Taxes are examples of data entities Matrixify does not support.

Additionally, the app offers no SEO migration options, nor does it allow store owners to migrate customer login credentials and accounts to the new shopping cart provider's platform. Cart2Cart, on the other hand, does.

Overall, the winner in this category is no doubt Cart2Cart.

Additional Options

Cart2Cart

One thing that sets Cart2Cart apart from most other store migration solutions on the market is the team’s dedication to continuously testing and reviewing the tool’s functionality to identify and resolve any gaps that may result in a poor user experience. For this reason, Cart2Cart has no shortage of add-ons that make for a seamless store migration process. The notable ones include:

• Data deletion from Target Store: If you transferred test data to what is about to become your new or had previously tried to migrate to the new platform manually, this add-on allows users to delete any existing data that might be in the Target Store before launching the actual migration using Cart2Cart. That way, you ensure the final result of the migration is accurate and only contains the data you want.

• Preservation of existing product, customer, and order IDs: Suppose you want to preserve the product, customer, and order identifiers you use in your current store. This Cart2Cart add-on lets you preserve those IDs so you can use them as-is in your new store. Store owners don’t have to go through the hassle of manually recreating them once they complete the migration process.

• Creation of product variants from attribute values: Activating this feature saves you from manually creating variants for every product you migrate to your new store. It can easily be done on Cart2Cart using various combinations of the attribute values.

• Preservation of product image URLs: Depending on your Source and Target shopping carts, you can activate this add-on to migrate the link structure of the products hosted in your current store. If this feature is disabled and the Target Store experiences downtime, any images whose URLs were not retained during migration will be displayed from the Source Store. This, in effect, means nothing will appear in your Target store during that time.

• Creation of 301 redirects on the Target Store: With Cart2Cart, store owners can create 301 redirects of their product and category URLs on their Target Stores to optimize their websites for SEO. This feature is available for several shopping carts, including Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace, BigCommerce, Magento, and more.

• Skip migration of product thumbnails: If, for whatever reason, you would rather not use the thumbnail images you had in your previous store once you migrate, this Cart2Cart add-on gives you the option to skip the migration of product thumbnails altogether. That way, only the main images are migrated, and search engines don't flag your site for having what they may perceive as duplicate images.

• Modification of stock entity numbers: Once you migrate your online store from your old platform to the new one, any out-of-stock products may not be displayed on the new platform. Activating this add-on circumvents this issue by allowing you to change the number of stock entities displayed in the Source cart to 100 in your Target cart.

• Migration of product and category URLs using 301 redirects: Cart2Cart allows you to create 301 redirects – permanent redirects from one link to another. You can use this add-on to redirect visitors who somehow end up in your old store to the corresponding products in your new Target store.

• Migration of customer login credentials: This add-on transfers your customers’ accounts and corresponding login credentials from the Source store to your new eCommerce platform. That way, users don't have to endure the hassle and inconvenience of recreating them in the Target store.

• Migration of credit memos, invoices, and shipments: With this feature, you can transfer customer data such as credit memos, invoices, and shipments from your old store to your new one automatically. You don’t have to worry about losing valuable customer details once you migrate.

Matrixify

Unfortunately, Matrixify does not offer any add-on features aside from what is included with the app. If you require any additional functionality that is not included in the out-of-the-box features that come with the app, you will have to retain a Matrixify expert at an hourly rate of $200 per hour to implement it in your Target store. These costs can rack up after a while, depending on how many things you need done and how long it takes to implement them.

As far as add-on capabilities go, Cart2Cart is again the clear winner on this front. The fact that its process is automated and integrated into the original up-front costs of the migration makes it time-effective and economical.

Pricing

Cart2Cart

Cart2Cart has a very flexible pricing structure. Unlike other data migration tools that adopt a fixed bouquet of pricing options, Cart2Cart bills you based on the number of entities you wish to migrate and the shopping cart platforms involved in the transfer.

To know the total cost of migrating your online store from your current eCommerce provider to a different platform, you can use Cart2Cart’s price estimate to get a ballpark idea of what it’s going to cost.

For instance, based on the estimator, migrating 1,000 products, 500 customers, and 500 orders will cost $69 using the Cart2Cart automated migration app. On the other hand, if you prefer to have an expert handle the entire process for you and even customize your new store to your liking, the Service Package option will cost you a one-off fee of $549.

The Free Demo only allows you to migrate 10 products and their associated entities.

Matrixify

Matrixify adopts a subscription-based model where you pay a standard fee depending on the size of your store and the volume of data you wish to migrate. There are four basic subscriptions to choose from:

• The Demo package is free but only allows store owners to migrate no more than 10 products, 10 customers, and 10 orders.
• The Basic package costs $20 per month and limits users to 5,000 products, 2,000 customers, and 1,000 orders.
• The Big package costs $50 monthly and limits users to 50,000 products, 20,000 customers, and 10,000 orders.
• For $200 per month, you get the Enterprise package, which allows you to migrate an unlimited number of products, customers, and orders.

At the surface level, Matrixify’s pricing package might seem like a better deal than Cart2Cart. However, it is worth noting that its lower price point can mainly be attributed to its limited functionality, which might cost you more in the long run if you need to retain an expert to do it for you manually.

Here’s why.

Cart2Cart allows store owners to migrate significantly more entities (aside from products, customers, and orders) in a fully automated process. On the other hand, Matrixify’s migration process is more manual, requiring users to work with Excel, Google Sheets, and CSV files and deal with complex configurations to get the whole thing to work. This process can be challenging for non-techie users, not to mention the high likelihood of errors.

There’s also the not-so-small fact that Cart2Cart is compatible with virtually all shopping carts. You can migrate your online store to any eCommerce platform of your choosing, regardless of the platform currently hosting your store. Matrixify, on the other hand, only lets you migrate to Shopify from Magento, Lightspeed, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce.

For this reason, based on the overall value derived from each tool, Cart2Cart presents a better deal compared to Matrixify.

Support

Cart2Cart

If you run into any issues while using the service or have a query that needs to be addressed, Cart2Cart offers several ways to contact the in-house support team. You can call them on the toll-free phone number listed on the website, email them, snail mail them a letter through any of the physical addresses provided, submit a support ticket, or speak to a real customer support representative through Live Chat.

The support team is very responsive and typically addresses all queries within 24 hours. If you would rather have them take care of the entire store migration process from start to finish, the technical support staff will do that for you.

Matrixify

Matrixify only offers two ways to contact them – via email or Slack. The only way to chat with the support team would be through Slack, which would require you to sign up to the platform first and chat with an AI bot, which may or may not direct your query to a human agent. Some users find this process cumbersome.

On the plus side, the folks at Matrixify typically respond to Slack and email queries within 24 hours.

Cart2Cart is the winner here as far as customer support goes. The fact that they offer multiple ways to get in touch with them based on what is most convenient for you is hard to beat.

Security

Cart2Cart

Cart2Cart is one of the most secure data migration tools in the industry. The company adopts a four-pronged approach to safeguard your data at every stage of the migration process.

• Server security: Each migration is hosted on a secure, dedicated Hetzner server, whose physical location and access are restricted.
• Network security: Cart2Cart adopts the latest firewall, architecture schema, and network access restrictions to ward off potential cyberattacks.
• Application security: The software implements 128-bit SSL encryption and HTTPS protocol to ensure sensitive data exchange is protected against unauthorized third-party access.
• Data access control: Cart2Cart staff access to client migration data is highly restricted, audited, and logged. Only authorized employees have access to client data and only on a need-be basis upon the client’s request.

Once you successfully migrate your store data from your Source cart to your Target cart, all associated data is deleted from the Cart2Cart server.

Matrixify

Matrixify does not explicitly provide information on the measures the team has taken to guarantee the security of your data when importing or exporting it. However, they have stated that store owners can choose whether they want their files to be public or private during the process. You can also control which users have access to those files within your business ecosystem. Additionally, the Matrixify app deletes all store files from its server after 30 days.

Overall, the level of security you get with Cart2Cart is hard to beat. Its four-pronged approach to safeguarding your migration data guarantees that your business information remains safe and secure at every stage of the process. It is, without doubt, the clear winner of the two.

Cart2Cart vs Matrixify – Verdict

Automated data migration tools like Cart2Cart and Matrixify have one primary goal: To streamline the end-to-end replatforming process, making it easier, faster, and cheaper to migrate your online store to a different eCommerce provider.

That said, shopping cart migration tools are not created equal. Different tools have different features and capabilities, each with its own distinct advantages. Matrixify only works if you’re migrating to or from Shopify. If your store migration goals fall outside this realm, tough luck! It won't be of much help to you or your business.

On the other hand, Cart2Cart is compatible with all major eCommerce platforms, including Shopify. There's also the fact that the process is fully automated, so you don't have to concern yourself with manual CSV uploads and downloads or complex processes, especially if you’re not tech-savvy. Plus, there's no downtime, so your customers can continue browsing and shopping on your online store as the migration continues in the background.

Our verdict in this Cart2Cart vs Matrixify comparison is as follows:

Cart2Cart’s capabilities are unmatched, particularly where all things security, functionality, and platform compatibility are concerned. It is user-friendly, highly intuitive, has outstanding 24/7 customer support, and offers great value for money since users only pay for the specific number of entities they wish to migrate. That’s something you don’t get with Matrixify and other Cart2Cart competitors.

Ready to leverage the industry’s most powerful eCommerce migration tool? Sign up for Cart2Cart today and get a free demo to see it in action.