CS-Cart → to Shopify

CS-Cart to Shopify: handing off the server without losing the catalog

CS-Cart is a capable platform. You own the source code, the add-on marketplace is inexpensive, and Multi-Vendor is one of the few packaged marketplace products on the market. Stores that leave it usually do so because running the software has become a job of its own. This guide is how we handle a CS-Cart to Shopify migration, for single stores, multi-storefront installs and Multi-Vendor marketplaces, including the parts that the export screens and the automated tools do not cover.

Why stores leave CS-Cart

• You run the stack. CS-Cart is installed on your own server, so PHP versions, MySQL, caching, backups and uptime are yours to manage. The current 4.20.x and 4.19.x releases support PHP 7.4 to 8.2, with 8.3 still in test mode, which means a server upgrade and a store upgrade have to be planned together.
• Upgrades are projects. New versions arrive through the upgrade center under an active support and upgrade subscription, and a store with a customized theme or core edits needs a developer to merge each release. CS-Cart’s own policy sets an end date for support and security fixes on older versions, so stores that skip upgrades eventually fall out of support.
• Add-on compatibility. Third-party add-ons are cheap to buy but have to be updated for each CS-Cart release, and one abandoned add-on can hold the whole store on an old version.
• Security and PCI scope. On a self-hosted store, server hardening, patching and your share of PCI compliance sit with you and your host. Shopify is a PCI DSS Level 1 service provider and runs the checkout itself.
• Checkout and payments. Shop Pay, accelerated wallets and a checkout that Shopify maintains replace a checkout you have to keep current yourself.
• The developer pool. CS-Cart developers exist but are fewer and more concentrated outside the US than Shopify developers.

To be fair, CS-Cart publishes its own comparison with Shopify, and it makes real points: source-code access, perpetual licenses and a built-in marketplace. If those matter more to you than the operating burden, staying is a reasonable decision. The rest of this guide assumes you have decided to move.

What migrates from CS-Cart to Shopify

CS-Cart exports CSV from Settings, Export data, with separate sections for products, features, orders, users, subscribers and translations (plus vendors on Multi-Vendor). Orders have two tabs, Orders and Order items, and both are needed. The REST API covers the same objects and more, including shipments, and on a self-hosted store we can also read the MySQL database directly for anything neither route exposes.

Data	Source on CS-Cart	Moves to Shopify?
Products with codes, names, descriptions, prices, list prices, stock, weights, categories, images, meta data	Export data, Products (CSV with an images directory) or the API	Yes. Product codes become SKUs, and meta titles and descriptions carry to Shopify’s SEO fields.
Product variations (4.12.1 and later) or option combinations (older versions)	Variation groups via the API; combinations via the API or database on older stores	Yes. Each variation group becomes one Shopify product with variants. See the variations section below.
Product options with price modifiers	API or database	Partly. Shopify has no native price modifier on a non-variant option, so each option is redesigned. See below.
Product features and filters	Export data, Features, plus the product export	Yes, as metafields with definitions, exposed as storefront filters through Search & Discovery. A brand feature becomes the vendor.
Categories	Product export paths and the API	Yes, as collections, with the hierarchy carried into menus.
Orders with line items, totals, taxes, shipping, statuses	Export data, Orders and Order items, or the API	Yes. Real orders with the original number and date, a matching transaction, and refund records where money went back.
Shipments and tracking numbers	Shipments API or database	Yes. Each shipment becomes a fulfillment with its carrier and tracking number.
Customers, addresses, user groups, newsletter subscribers	Export data, Users and Subscribers	Yes. User groups become tags or B2B companies. Marketing consent comes from the subscriber list.
Passwords	Stored as hashes	No. CS-Cart hashes cannot be used by Shopify. Customers reset on first login or use Shopify’s passwordless sign-in.
Reviews and comments	Reviews add-on data via the API or database	Yes, into Judge.me or your chosen review app.
Promotions, gift certificates, pages, blog	Admin and database	Promotions rebuilt as discounts, certificate balances as gift cards, pages and posts moved with their content.
Theme, blocks, layouts and add-ons	Design and add-on files	No. The design is rebuilt on Shopify and each add-on is mapped to a Shopify app or native feature, or dropped.

CS-Cart URLs and redirects

With the SEO add-on off, CS-Cart pages live at dynamic URLs such as /index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=1533 and /index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=166. With it on, the SEO settings choose between product formats like /product-name, /product-name.html, /category-name/subcategory-name/product-name and /category-name/subcategory-name/product-name.html, and category formats like /parent-category/category.html or /parent-category/category/. Multi-language stores can add a language folder, for example /es/product-name.html. Many stores changed format at some point, so several forms are often still indexed.

Shopify uses /products/handle, /collections/handle and /pages/handle. We build the redirect map from CS-Cart’s SEO names table, where every object’s SEO name lives, then add the dynamic dispatch URLs keyed on product and category IDs, the old formats, the language folders and anything in Search Console that the database no longer knows about. Because every CS-Cart variation is its own product with its own SEO name, each variation URL redirects to the parent product with the right variant selected. Every redirect is requested against the live domain before launch.

Tools

Cart2Cart, a partner of ours, and LitExtension both support CS-Cart as a source, and both are fine for a first pass on products and customers. Their limits are the same ones we see on every platform: tracking numbers on shipped orders do not come across, refunded orders tend to land as plain paid orders, and the redirects they generate are built from guessed slugs rather than the SEO names CS-Cart actually served. We finish those parts ourselves. Self-hosting helps here: with database access we read MySQL directly for shipments, option modifiers, variation groups, SEO names and anything else the exports leave out, and reconcile every count against the source tables.

How we run it

1. Audit. CS-Cart version and edition, storefronts, vendors, add-ons, option and variation structure, features and filters, URL formats, integrations, and database access. The result is a fixed-price scope.
2. Build in a free Shopify development store. As a Shopify Plus Partner we build in development stores, so you pay Shopify nothing until launch. Theme, checkout, payments, shipping, taxes and Markets are set up here.
3. Catalog. Products, variation groups, options, features as metafields, collections, images and SEO fields.
4. Customers. Addresses, user groups, consent and tax-exempt status.
5. Orders. Line items, taxes, shipping, transactions, refunds and fulfillments with tracking, under original numbers and dates.
6. Redirects. Every SEO name, legacy format and dispatch URL, tested one by one.
7. Sample, then full import. A sample of each entity including refunded, split-shipment and guest orders for your sign-off, then the full run, reconciled against the CS-Cart tables.
8. Cutover. DNS moves to Shopify and a delta sync brings across orders and customers created since the full run.
9. Post-launch SEO evaluation. Once Google has re-crawled the store and the first real analytics are in, we review coverage, 404s, rankings and conversion, and fix what we find.

Cost and timeline

A CS-Cart to Shopify migration starts from $2,500 for stores under 500 products and 5,000 orders ($3,500 for larger stores), and typically takes six to eight weeks. Larger catalogs, Multi-Vendor marketplaces, multi-storefront installs and integrations such as ERP or accounting are quoted as a fixed price after the audit. Terms are 50% to begin and 50% once the store is live and you are fully satisfied with the figures.

The Shopify plan is chosen in the audit, not at launch. Live carrier rates, the number of staff accounts, B2B price lists and expansion stores all depend on the plan, and a CS-Cart store that relied on real-time UPS or FedEx quotes, trade customer groups or several storefronts usually needs a higher tier than a simple single-storefront catalog does. We set that out in the scope alongside your current hosting, license and add-on costs so the comparison is complete.

Option modifiers and variations

Since CS-Cart 4.12.1, option combinations no longer exist. Stock-tracked choices such as size and color are product variations: separate products, each with its own code, price, stock and URL, grouped by the features that differ between them. On Shopify a variation group becomes one product, and the grouping features become its options. Shopify allows three options per product and, since October 2025, up to 2,048 variants, so most groups fit. A group that varies on more than three features is split or has a feature moved to a metafield. Older stores still on combinations map the same way, from the combinations data.

Options are the harder part. CS-Cart options can carry price and weight modifiers, absolute or percentage, so gift wrap can add a fixed amount or a premium finish can add 20 percent. Shopify has no native equivalent for a choice that is not a variant. We sort each option into one of three routes: fold it into the variants with the modifier applied to each variant price, when it is a real product choice; model it as a separate add-on product attached through a product options app, when it is a paid extra; or capture it as a line item property with no price, when it is only information such as engraving text. Every modified price is checked against CS-Cart’s calculation before launch.

Product features, filters and brands

CS-Cart features hold the specifications and drive the storefront filters. Automated tools usually import them as text in the description or drop them, and the category pages lose every filter customers used. We create a metafield definition for each feature with the right type, load the values per product, and set up the same filters in Shopify’s Search & Discovery app. The brand feature becomes the Shopify vendor, with a brand metaobject for logos and brand pages if your theme used them.

Multiple storefronts

CS-Cart runs several storefronts from one admin and one database, with shared or separate products, and in some editions separate customer bases. When the storefronts sell the same catalog in different countries, languages or currencies, Shopify Markets covers it in one store, with a domain, language, currency and pricing per market. When they are really separate businesses with their own catalogs and customers, they become separate Shopify stores, which on Shopify Plus can be run as expansion stores. We decide storefront by storefront in the audit.

CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

Shopify is not a marketplace platform out of the box. A Multi-Vendor store moves to Shopify with a marketplace app such as Multi Vendor Marketplace Pro+ by Shipturtle or Webkul MultiVendor Marketplace, which add vendor accounts, dashboards, commissions and payouts. We export vendors from CS-Cart, map each vendor’s products to the app’s vendor records, and carry commission rates and vendor plans across as far as the chosen app supports them. Vendor payout history stays in CS-Cart exports as a record. This is the part of a CS-Cart migration most worth scoping carefully, and we compare the apps against your actual vendor workflow before choosing.

What you get at handover

A reconciliation ledger from the CS-Cart tables to the live Shopify counts for products, variants, customers, orders and fulfillments, with every exclusion named; the redirect verification list with the status each URL returned; the option and variation mapping, including every modifier and how it was handled; the feature to metafield map; the storefront and vendor decisions from the audit; and a recorded walkthrough of the Shopify admin for your team.

Questions we settle in the survey

• Which CS-Cart version and edition are you on, and do we have database access?
• How many storefronts are there, and do they share products and customers?
• Is it a Multi-Vendor marketplace, and how are vendors paid?
• Which options carry price modifiers, and which are really variants?
• Do you need live carrier rates at checkout? Third-party carrier-calculated shipping needs Advanced or Plus, or Grow on annual billing, so it decides the plan.
• Which add-ons does the store depend on day to day?

Frequently asked questions

Start with the migration survey. For other self-hosted PHP platforms, see the OpenCart guide and the PrestaShop guide.