Adobe Business Catalyst Migration

Migrate to WordPress

You’re probably already aware that Adobe recently announced the discontinuation of Business Catalyst. The popular web CMS will be shutting down on March 26th, 2021. After this date, all BC sites will no longer be live, they will not be accessible to the general public or the site administrators, and all data will be deleted. Current BC users will have to find an alternative platform for their websites and data before this date.

We strongly recommend existing Business Catalyst users consider migrating to WordPress — here’s why.

Adobe Business Catalyst vs WordPress in 2018

WordPress is an open source CMS platform, meaning it will never unexpectedly shut down or be discontinued. If it is ever abandoned by it’s developers, WordPress websites will remain online and it’s code base will continue to function.

Business Catalyst was a convenient all-in-one solution, featuring a built-in CRM, mailing list and eCommerce. WordPress on the other hand, is easier to integrate with third-party solutions, making it much more powerful in today’s web. It’s more extendable, has a massive plugins library, and utilises more modern web technologies than BC. Harnessing the power of services like MailChimp and Google Analytics is invaluable – most modern websites integrate multiple services that are at the top of their respective fields, rather than using second-rate, built-in options.

WordPress already powers 30% of the web and is generally awesome which is the reason why around 5 years ago, despite being a Premium BC Partner, we stopped working with Adobe Business Catalyst completely and moved 100% of our work to WordPress.

How to migrate Business Catalyst to WordPress

Posts

Your Business Catalyst blog posts content can easily be migrated using RSS feed.

Pages

Pages will mostly have to be rebuilt using WordPress, although some template code will possibly be able to be migrated.

Website styles / theme / design

Most website styles will have to rebuilt into a new WordPress theme, although parts of the existing CSS code should be reusable. If you’re looking at migrating, it’s probably a good chance to refresh the look and feel of your website anyway!

EDMs and Mailing List

Mailing list data can be exported to a third-party EDM service, like MailChimp.

eCommerce

It’s technically possible to migrate products into Woocommerce (currently the best eCommerce solution for WordPress). Customer data can also be exported and moved.

Custom Functionality

Unfortunately, custom BC apps will not easily transition into the WordPress environment, and will virtually all have to be rebuilt the WordPress way.

Can’t I just copy my Business Catalyst site straight across to WordPress?

It’s currently not possible to cleanly migrate an entire site directly from Business Catalyst to WordPress with one click of a mouse – each aspect of an Adobe Business Catalyst website has to be transferred individually.

In most cases it’s probably more economical in the long run to rebuild a new WordPress website.

But don’t worry – with plenty of experience in both platforms we are here to help!

Get in touch