Once you’ve successfully tested your data migration process, verified mappings, and gained confidence in your approach, you’re ready to proceed with loading your complete product dataset into BigCommerce.
If your source catalog undergoes regular updates which may coincide with your migration, consider implementing a data freeze or define a clear “cut-off” time to avoid missing late changes.
When performing large-scale migrations, it is essential to use structures that ensure data is not duplicated.
Use unique product identifiers to check if a product exists before retrying an API call to create it.
For batch uploads, log each product’s status whenever possible to ensure complete migration.
BigCommerce enforces strict platform limits, such as maximum variants per product, image sizes, and total catalog size. Exceeding these can cause migration jobs to fail or result in incomplete imports. Review BigCommerce’s documentation on limitations before migration to avoid unexpected errors.
The following table provides approximations of migration times for various catalog sizes. These estimates are based on platform limits and assumed catalog complexity. If you have a particularly complex catalog, your results will vary from these provisions.
Based on this information and the guidance provided above, plan your migration with enough time allotted to prevent issues.
Ensure your migration script checks for existing products (by unique identifier, like SKU) before creating or updating records, so that repeated or retried requests don’t result in duplicates. Always use migration logs to track the status of each product upload and re-run only failed or incomplete batches.
Always make a full backup of your source data before starting the migration. If you encounter issues, use your migration logs to identify and remove or correct only the affected products in BigCommerce. For large rollbacks, you may need to restore from your backup or script deletions based on the IDs created during the migration. Document the rollback steps taken for future reference.
Migrate related entities (such as categories, brands, and images) before importing products. Maintain a mapping between original and BigCommerce-assigned IDs for these entities, and update product references accordingly to ensure all links remain valid. After migration, verify all relationships and assignments are intact in the BigCommerce store.
In addition to product counts, use your migration logs to reconcile all transferred data. Perform spot checks on complex or critical products, and check that all related entities and references are present. Use API queries or platform reports to systematically verify catalog integrity.