Ecommerce replatforming checklist: switch platforms without losing SEO

In short: ecommerce replatforming works without losing SEO or orders when you follow 7 stages: inventory, export, import, a 301 redirect map, testing, the domain switch and 60 days of monitoring. You build the new store on the side while the old one keeps selling. When you move to CloudCart, our team migrates the store in up to 45 days.

This checklist is for store owners leaving WooCommerce, Shopify, OpenCart, Magento or a custom-built site who sell in or from Bulgaria. The detailed steps for one platform are in the guide to migrating from WooCommerce without losing SEO. The import itself is covered in importing from WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento. The text comes from the team at CloudCart, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform. The facts about Google follow Google's guide to moving a site with URL changes.

When is switching ecommerce platforms worth it?

Switching platforms is worth it when the problem is the platform itself: maintenance, fees, missing integrations or speed. If the problem is your products, prices or advertising, a new platform will not fix it.

Symptom	Does replatforming fix it?	What to check in the new platform
A plugin or module update breaks the cart	Yes	Hosting, security and updates are included
You pay a percentage of every sale	Yes	A fixed plan and 0% transaction fees
Couriers, cash on delivery and invoices run on plugins from different authors	Yes	Built-in Econt, Speedy, BOX NOW and Ordinance N-18 documents
The site slows down during a campaign	Yes	A hosted platform that absorbs the peaks
Visitors come, orders don't	Partly	Conversion, prices and shipping first; the platform second
Few visitors	No	SEO, ads and content, on any platform

Econt and Speedy (DPD Bulgaria) are the two main Bulgarian courier networks, and BOX NOW is a parcel locker network. Ordinance N-18 is Bulgaria's set of rules for registering and reporting sales, including online sales. If most of your answers are "yes", compare what you spend each month today (hosting, licenses, plugins, a developer, transaction fees) with the fixed plan of the new platform. CloudCart plans, billed annually and excluding VAT, are Baby Pack €14, Starter Pack €33, CC Pro €83 and CC Master €249 a month, as listed on the pricing page.

The ecommerce replatforming checklist: 7 stages

Ecommerce replatforming is moving the products, customers, orders, content and old URLs from one platform to another, so the store carries on with the same domain and the same Google rankings.

Stage	What you do	Done when
1. Inventory	List the data, URLs, integrations and marketing consents	Every old URL with clicks is in one spreadsheet
2. Export	Download products, customers and orders from the old platform and keep a copy	You have the files and a database backup
3. Import	The new store is filled on a temporary address while the old one sells	Product, variant and customer counts match
4. Redirect map	Every old URL gets a new one, one to one	The map is uploaded as 301 redirects
5. Testing	Test orders with every courier and every payment method	Zero difference in counts and every test order goes through
6. Switch	The domain points to the new store at a quiet hour	SSL is active and a real order goes through
7. Monitoring	Search Console, 404 errors and sales for the first 60 days	No new 404s, clicks back at the previous level

The inventory and the redirect map decide whether you lose traffic. Most traffic losses come from two mistakes: the old URLs were never listed, or the domain was switched before the redirects were ready.

What to list before you migrate an online store

Before the migration, list five things: the data, the URLs, the integrations, the consents and the documents. The inventory shows what would otherwise surface after the switch.

• The data. Number of products and variants, categories, customers, orders, blog posts, information pages, languages and currencies.
• The URLs. The old store's sitemap and the Performance report in Google Search Console for the last 12 months, Pages tab. Add the pages with external links from the Links report. How to read Search Console is explained in Google Search Console for an online store.
• The integrations. Couriers, payment methods, warehouse or ERP, marketplace feeds, pixels and Google Analytics 4, your email platform. Next to each one, write down what replaces it. In Bulgaria, note separately how you handle cash on delivery (COD) payouts from the courier and the Ordinance N-18 sales documents, because on a plugin-based store these are often separate add-ons.
• The consents. Which customers are subscribed to the newsletter and which have unsubscribed. Under Article 7(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation (applicable since May 25, 2018), the controller must be able to show that the customer gave consent. Move consent exactly as it was: a customer who unsubscribed gets no marketing emails in the new store either.
• The documents. Download orders and invoices from the old platform before you cancel its subscription or hosting. Once it stops, you may lose access to them.

What moves when you switch ecommerce platforms

When you switch platforms, the products, customers, blog posts, SEO titles and old URLs move. The order history moves separately, while customer passwords and the design do not move.

Data	How it gets into CloudCart	What to know
Products, variants, images, categories	The importer for WooCommerce, Shopify or Magento, CSV or XML import, the Admin API or our team	Images are downloaded and stored in CloudCart, so the old server can be shut down
Customers: name, email, group	Customers, Import from CSV, or our team	The import asks for a two-factor authentication code
Order history	Moved by the CloudCart team	Kept separately with us for reference and accounting; new orders and invoices start in CloudCart
Blog posts	The Blog CSV Import app or our team	The main image of each post is downloaded; check the images inside the text before you shut down the old server
SEO titles and meta descriptions	Moved by our team; after an import, check them yourself	Without them, pages lose part of the reason they rank
Old URLs	301 redirects from a CSV file	They cover pages; files such as PDFs and images do not go through them
Customer passwords	Not moved	On import the platform sets a new password, and the customer signs in through "Forgot password"
Design, plugins, modules	Not moved	Replaced by a theme and built-in features

The import apps are on every plan, and the limit grows with the plan. CSV import takes up to 100 products on Baby Pack, 2,000 on Starter Pack, 7,500 on CC Pro and 10,000 on CC Master. How to map the columns of a file from another platform is covered in the guide to importing products from CSV and XML.

How to build a 301 redirect map for any platform

A redirect map is a two-column spreadsheet, old URL and new URL, for every page with clicks or external links. A 301 redirect tells Google the page has moved permanently. According to Google's documentation on redirects, a permanent redirect is a signal that the new URL is the canonical one, and Google's site move guide states that 301 redirects don't cause a loss in PageRank.

Every platform builds URLs its own way, so the list starts from its pattern.

Old platform	What the URLs look like	What to watch for
WooCommerce	/product/…, /product-category/…, /product-tag/… with the default WordPress permalinks	Tags often have no equivalent: send them with one /product-tag/* rule to the closest category
Shopify	The fixed paths /products/… and /collections/…, per Shopify's help on URL redirects	Take the URLs from the sitemap and add the pages with clicks from Search Console
OpenCart	Without SEO URLs: /index.php?route=product/product&product_id=…, per the OpenCart documentation; with SEO URLs: keyword-based paths	If SEO URLs were switched on later, Google may have both kinds indexed; list both
Magento	Depending on the settings, the URL may end in .html and include the category path, per the Adobe Commerce documentation	One product can have several URLs through different categories; all of them point to one new URL
Custom site	Anything, for example /p/4821.html or /c/12.html	There may be no sitemap: the list comes from Search Console and the server logs

In CloudCart, redirects live under Marketing, SEO, 301 redirects. You add them one by one on every plan, or upload them in bulk from a CSV file: up to 100 rows on Baby Pack, 2,000 on Starter Pack and unlimited on CC Pro and CC Master. The * symbol covers a whole section, and the lookup tries the URL with and without a trailing slash by itself. The gclid, fbclid, utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign parameters are passed through the redirect, while utm_term and utm_content are not.

Important: a redirect of the "Product" type is tied to the product itself and is deleted automatically if you delete the product. For products you will discontinue after the migration, set a "Manual" redirect to their category, so it stays after the deletion.

Three rules apply on every platform. Every old URL points to the closest new page: if you send many URLs to the home page, Google may treat them as soft 404s. The redirect points straight to the final URL, with no chains. Keep the redirects for at least 1 year, which is the period Google's guide gives for keeping them in place.

How long does ecommerce replatforming take?

The timeline depends on the volume: the number of products and variants, old URLs, languages and links to a warehouse or ERP. When the CloudCart team does the move, it takes up to 45 days, however heavy the migration, and the old store keeps selling the whole time.

When	What happens	The old store
The start	Inventory, a dated plan, export and import on a temporary address	Sells as usual
The middle	Redirect map, titles and content, integrations, test orders	Sells as usual
7 days before the switch	Changes to URLs and categories stop in the old store	Sells, no new categories
2 days before	At your domain provider, the DNS record cache time (TTL) is lowered, for example to 5 minutes	Sells
Switch day	The latest orders and customers come in with a top-up import, the domain is pointed	Stops taking orders
After 2-4 weeks	The old hosting is shut down if there are no new 404s	Off
60 days after	Weekly check of Search Console and sales	Off

According to Google's guide, a small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move in the results, and a larger site takes longer.

What are the risks of switching platforms, and how do you close them?

There are six risks when you switch platforms, and each one closes with a specific check before the switch.

Risk	How it shows	How you close it
Lost Google rankings	Many 404 errors in Search Console, traffic drops	A map of every URL with clicks, uploaded before the switch
Store closed to Google	Not a single page gets indexed	An active plan before the switch: on a trial or an expired plan, CloudCart sets Disallow: / in /robots.txt
Missing products and variants	Customer complaints weeks later	Compare the counts; go live only at a difference of zero
Blocked orders	A payment method or courier fails on day one	A test order with every courier and every payment method, including COD to a courier office and a parcel locker
Email stops	Emails to your domain don't arrive	The mail records (MX) are added in the domain settings of the new store
Lost ad data	Purchases are not recorded in Google Analytics 4 and Meta	Pixels and feeds are reconnected to the new catalog

What changes for a store that ran couriers on plugins is covered in Econt and Speedy on WooCommerce. For Ordinance N-18, CloudCart issues the sales document, the invoice and the credit note from the order, and the N18 Audit app builds the monthly XML file for the NRA (National Revenue Agency, Bulgaria's tax authority), as described on the invoices page.

Switch day: 6 steps

Switch day is short if everything before it was tested.

1. Process the last orders in the old store. Move the new orders and customers from the last few days with a top-up import.
2. Point the domain at a quiet hour. In CloudCart the domain is connected under Settings, Domains, and the SSL certificate is issued and renewed by itself.
3. Place a real order. By card and by cash on delivery, to a courier office and to an address.
4. Open /robots.txt. If it contains Disallow: /, the store is closed to Google and the plan is not active.
5. Open 20 old URLs. Start with the ones with the most clicks from your inventory. Each one must lead to its own product or category.
6. Submit the new sitemap. In CloudCart, sitemap.xml is generated and updated by itself. Submit it in Search Console and check that purchases are recorded in Google Analytics 4.

What to monitor in the first 60 days

For the first 60 days, check three things every week: 404 errors, clicks per page and sales.

• 404 errors. The Indexing, Pages report in Search Console. For every old URL with an error, add a redirect.
• Clicks per page. Compare with the period before the migration. If only the categories dropped, their text or titles are most often missing.
• Sales. Compare orders, average order value and conversion with the last weeks on the old platform.
• Customers. Send the migrated customers a service email on how to set a new password through "Forgot password", and marketing emails only to those with consent.

What the CloudCart team handles in a migration

There are three paths to CloudCart with the same result: we move the store for you, you move it yourself with the apps in the admin, or your developer migrates through the Admin API.

Path	Who does the work	Timeline and cost
Our team	CloudCart staff: products, customers, blog posts, order history, a 301 from every old URL, testing and the switch	Up to 45 days; €0 with a 24-month contract, through Dec 31, 2026
You, in the admin	The importers for WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento (1.x), CSV and XML import, customers and redirects from CSV	The price of the plan; limits grow with the plan
Your developer	Admin API: products, images, categories, customers with addresses, blog posts and redirects	The developer's time; from Starter Pack up

You request a migration by our team in the admin of the new store, under Services, Migration. You get a contact person and a dated plan, place a test order in the new store, and the domain is switched when you say so. In one URL change on a live store through the Admin API, 13,418 redirects went in within 30 minutes, without an error.

The terms for each platform are on the migration pages from WooCommerce, from Shopify, from OpenCart and from Magento, and the overview is on the migration page.

Frequently asked questions

Have a question about moving your store? Write to us at support@cloudcart.com.