Recently, we had the opportunity to work with a marketplace-style business (similar to Amazon or eBay) toward their goal of moving to a new eCommerce hosting platform. They were previously using Magento 2, and were interested in moving to X-Cart Enterprise. 

Note: The results and pricing may vary based on your business and what you’re looking for, but be sure that we give the same care and attention to each and every one of our customers.

What made them decide to look into a new eCommerce platform?

When we started talking to them, there were three main problems they were looking to solve:

1. The cost of managing their website was increasing almost daily, and it wasn’t scaling with their business.
2. At peak shopping times with a high shopper load, the site wasn’t performing as expected and they had trouble accessing technical assistance.
3. As the business continued to grow, new features required custom coding which required more money and even more time.

What was the marketplace host looking for in the new platform?

To go through the process of moving to a new hosting platform, there were a few requirements that needed to be met. Each business is different, so it’s always helpful to list them out as well as prioritize them.

Our example here was really looking for high-quality marketplace features. They wanted a unique storefront and the ability for each vendor to have a dashboard. Working with so many different vendors, they also needed to ensure they could split orders and payments effectively without compromising the shopper’s experience. Additionally, since they sell to customers all over the world, their ideal system would be able to accept a variety of currencies and ship to even more countries. 

Additionally, our customer here is an open marketplace which means that new vendors are able to sign up easily. This also requires an admin role to be able to approve or decline these new vendors.

Like a lot of growing brands, they wanted a blog section of the website where they could connect with shoppers and be more accessible in an increasingly social world. This type of content is also designed to help them gain organic traffic. Additionally, they wanted to ensure they were easily located in search to help them promote their business in as many different channels as possible.

In an effort to get a better understanding of their vendors and what they’re looking for, our customer also sells their own products through the website. This helps them to test the effectiveness of programs, add-ons, and systems to keep things running smoothly for other vendors.

Another opportunity they give their vendors is paid advertising. This brings in additional revenue and traffic for our customer, but also more control for the vendors. They can also gain additional revenue through the offered partnership program, which was another feature our clients needed in order to make the switch to a new hosting platform.

As the final requirement, our customer was looking for an account manager or account management team. With the size of their business, they needed a dedicated hosting account that reached optimal performance, even at peak times. This means constant monitoring and agility to make quick fixes as needed. They also had to be sure that the system they use would provide top-notch security for their shoppers and all of their sensitive data. 

Why did they choose X-Cart?

Our number one goal with helping this company move from Magento to X-Cart was to maintain all of the features they already had (as well as some extras) while enhancing the speed and performance of the site, SEO and mobile readiness, as well as stronger security and UX. 

For the first few months of the transition, they had a dedicated developer from the X-Cart team there to help them understand new processes as well as teach the implementation and development of X-Cart 5. 

Finally, they were given a dedicated VPS server with full 24/7 monitoring and maintenance, as well as premium technical support available whenever they needed it.

What was the cost to have a Magento 2 hosted store? How much did it cost to move the eCommerce store to X-Cart?

All in all, for what our customer was looking for, they’re estimated to save almost $300,000 in their first year, and about $270,000 in the second year with X-Cart. Don’t believe us? Look at the numbers:

Note: The prices may vary based on the project type and customization needs. However, our project pricing is designed to grow with you and be flexible to you and your budget, so it’ll never be as expensive as working with another platform, regardless of the amount of customizations, added features, and services.

What did this do for their business?

It took them an entire year to launch their website with Magento 2. The transition from Magento 2 to X-Cart 5 took them only 6 weeks! The Magento website even remained live while we moved them over, minimizing the potential for lost sales. Overall, the site was only down for about 6 hours, which is standard for DNS to move to the new location.