X-Cart forums

[xim]

Hi folks,

Since we launched X-Cart 5, our clients keep asking if we are discontinuing X-Cart 4. We always knew your business relies on X-Cart and we cannot leave you behind. In all our meetings, we promised we are not going to stop supporting X-Cart 4 users.

We’re as good as our word and we keep releasing new X-Cart 4 versions, adding new features, fixing bugs. The next version (v4.7.11) will be out in April, 2019.

However, according to our records, 100% of our new clients now choose X-Cart 5 for their eCommerce business. 60% of all our customers are now on X-Cart 5.

We decided on closing sales of X-Cart 4 a.k.a Classic editions (Gold, GoldPlus, and Platinum) from our official website x-cart.com. Our resellers and industry partners can still buy the legacy software license for X-Cart GoldPlus or Platinum on demand: sales@x-cart.com

Again, we are still supporting X-Cart 4 stores and will not discontinue such support until there are live stores on this platform. You will never walk alone, guys.

Moreover, all the customers on Gold edition can upgrade their license to GoldPlus for free – please contact us to claim the offer. The upgrade packs for v.4.5 to 4.7 will be available in the File Area section of your HelpDesk account after the license exchange. Our team of experts is ready to take the burden of upgrade procedures off your shoulders. Just contact them and ask for help.

-------------

What’s next?

If you are happy with your current store and do not want to change anything, just keep using X-Cart 4. If you need new features, you may want to upgrade to the latest X-Cart 4 version (4.7.10, 4.7.11) and/or X-Cart GoldPlus (if you are on X-Cart Gold).

If you decide to switch from X-Cart Gold or Gold Plus to X-Cart Business and are ready to transfer the site yourself, we have a ready solution – the Data Migration Wizard - https://market.x-cart.com/addons/migration-wizard.html. With this migration tool, you can transfer the following data types:

- Configuration settings (company info, general settings, contact us, SEO-friendly URLs)
- Content (static pages, speed bar)
- Products (general info, images, SEO-friendly URLs, bestsellers, market price, product options and variants, wholesale prices, etc.)
- Categories (general info, images, SEO-friendly URLs)
- Users (as is)
- Memberships (as is)
- Zones (as is)
- Payment settings (for the popular payment methods)
- Shipping settings (user defined and real time)
- Orders (as is)

The migration process is described in detail with tips and step by step instructions in the knowledge base. All you need is to upgrade your v4 license to the v5 Business package for $49.50 only. You save 90% of the initial cost of the license.

If you’d rather we made the transfer, you should opt for the Migration Service pack. Please find more information from this page:
https://www.x-cart.com/x-cart-migration.html

-----

How X-Cart 5 can help you grow your eCommerce business

Launched 5+ years ago, X-Cart 5 has by now developed into a fast, modern, flexible and easy-going eCommerce solution. It helps online business owners improve their positions in the ever-growing eCommerce market and survive the tough competition.

Why people choose X-Cart 5:

- It’s fully-functional. 99,99% of the built-in features match those of X-Cart 4. Plus 300% extra features for even better admin and customer experience.
- It’s extendable. 1000+ ready add-ons and integrations in the built-in App Store – installed with one link, just like adding an app on your smartphone.
- It’s customizable. You’ll have a whole mighty Webmaster mode to tweak any part of your storefront.
- It’s upgradeable. And the brand new upgrade system runs autonomic upgrades to allow pain-free upgrade process within a few clicks. This is the reason why 65% оf X-Cart 5 users upgrade to the new versions. Just compare with the 4% users of legacy platform upgrades.
- It’s stable. Yes. It’s customizable AND upgradeable AND stable. Unlike all other eCommerce solutions where it’s two of the three, X-Cart 5 is a blend.
- It’s secure. 100% PCI-DSS compliant by default.
- It’s mobile and SEO optimized by default. No comments here, it’s just awesome.
- It’s cost-efficient. eCommerce software license at a cost of an iPad – that sounds very affordable.

It has better conversion than the v4 branch (based on the statistics of the merchants who migrated from X-Cart 4).

Check the reviews of the merchants who already migrated to v5.



Review the full article about why people chose to switch to X-Cart 5: https://www.x-cart.com/blog/reviews-about-migration-to-xcart-5.html

However, if you’re satisfied with your current X-Cart Classic store, great! Keep developing your business, grow your sales, we’ll never abandon you. Our customer care, support and hosting teams along with the developers will work their best to help you grow your business just as they always did. Stay tuned for the release of new X-Cart 4.7.11 this April.

Remember, we always have your back – we consider it our main priority.

--------

Summary

- No sales of new licenses of Gold/GoldPlus/Platinum licenses for new customers. Only for the partners and existing merchants who need to clone the existing stores.
- Continue support v4 branch. The release is scheduled to April 2019
- All Gold licenses could be upgraded to GoldPlus for free. Contact our team to do it.
- You can upgrade your v4 store to the newest 4.7.10 version in the v4 branch or consider upgrading to v5 to increase your conversion and boost your sales.

[elmirage001]

Thank you so much for again confirming that we XC4 users will not be abandoned!

April will mark 12 years using X-Cart and we depend on it everyday. Our business niche has some pretty unique challenges and XC4 solves them perfectly. Our store is heavily modified and XC4 allows us to quickly make changes in house which keeps costs down. XC5 would make things easier for us but we would lose the huge advantage we have over the other stores in our niche.

Thank you all again!

Paul

[ITVV]

@elmirage001 - Hi Paul, we are exactly like you, 12 years with x-cart 4, heavily modified and using PhilJ's excellent reBoot skin

It's a great platform and should never be allowed to disappear. It's great that support for x-cart 4 will continue.

Like you a move to x-cart 5 would mean losing the ability to "tweak" stuff when we want to do something quick and dirty!

I am just a little surprised that x-cart licenses can no longer be purchased If support is continuing then why not carry on selling the platform

I have a couple of new projects later in the year that I want to use x-cart 4 on. Just seems a bit of an odd business decision to me

Kind regards to all

ITVV

[elmirage001]

Originally Posted by ITVV

@elmirage001 - Hi Paul, we are exactly like you, 12 years with x-cart 4, heavily modified and using PhilJ's excellent reBoot skin

It's a great platform and should never be allowed to disappear. It's great that support for x-cart 4 will continue.

Like you a move to x-cart 5 would mean losing the ability to "tweak" stuff when we want to do something quick and dirty!

I am just a little surprised that x-cart licenses can no longer be purchased If support is continuing then why not carry on selling the platform

I have a couple of new projects later in the year that I want to use x-cart 4 on. Just seems a bit of an odd business decision to me

Kind regards to all

ITVV

Hi ITVV!

You bring up an excellent point. Maybe they can make an exception for Old Timers like us

[ITVV]

Originally Posted by elmirage001

Hi ITVV!

You bring up an excellent point. Maybe they can make an exception for Old Timers like us

Definitely an "Old Timer" here

All the best

ITVV

[cflsystems]

Originally Posted by xim

If you decide to switch from X-Cart Gold or Gold Plus to X-Cart Business and are ready to transfer the site yourself, we have a ready solution – the Data Migration Wizard - https://market.x-cart.com/addons/migration-wizard.html. With this migration tool, you can transfer the following data types:

- Configuration settings (company info, general settings, contact us, SEO-friendly URLs)
- Content (static pages, speed bar)
- Products (general info, images, SEO-friendly URLs, bestsellers, market price, product options and variants, wholesale prices, etc.)
- Categories (general info, images, SEO-friendly URLs)
- Users (as is)
- Memberships (as is)
- Zones (as is)
- Payment settings (for the popular payment methods)
- Shipping settings (user defined and real time)
- Orders (as is)

You should clarify - stock XC4. The migration will not touch anything custom, CDSEO urls, 3rd party modules. Only whatever comes stock with XC4 and some of the XC own modules.




@elmirage001 / @ITVV
Unfortunately XC4 is dead. The process started with the release of XC5. QT needs to focus on one product only if they want that product to succeed. And this is XC5. And they want every new sale to be on XC5 so the platform can grow.

There is no surprise here.


It's like everyone was so sad MS "abandoned" Window XP and then 7 since no one seemed to like Win 10... But they need to do what needs to be done to bring the new platform mainstream.


And honestly with so much push for XC5 and aslmost every dev walked out of XC like years ago there is just no room for further development on XC4

[xim]

I do not agree that xc4 is dead. Stock xc4 is outdated, right, but most of our xc4 based customers have highly customized stores, it is not stock v4 anymore, it is business specific ecommerce platforms which are very effective for certain business processes. We record a very good transaction of sales on the existing v4 customer base, that's why we continue to support this platform.

However, starting a new business with stock v4 is not a good idea at all, with v5 you can grow faster and more effectively. That's why we push all the new business to the new platform.
The only exclusion is to clone the existing v4 store to the new business (you will use all your custom works and can copy your business process as well) - it might work for the merchants. We see such result within our projects.

[thebluedoorboutique]

I've been struggling with the thought of moving to XC5. I think if we're going to stay on the platform, we have to make the move to XC5, but it will most likely cost us $10-15k to re-create our customization and our OMS doesn't support XC5, meaning moving to a SaaS Order Management Software-- even more $$

What does ITVV mean in the quote below, can you not directly edit the files like you can is XC4?

Originally Posted by ITVV

Like you a move to x-cart 5 would mean losing the ability to "tweak" stuff when we want to do something quick and dirty!

[cflsystems]

You can edit templates but not php files. However editing templates while allowed is not a good thing to do unless it is done via custom module.

To put it simple - any change you want to make to the cart has to be done via module. This ensures whatever you are changing stays even when you upgrade cart or modules you are modifying. Also when you have it as a module you can turn it on/off simply by enable/disable the module.

Any other way of making changes to XC5 should be consider temporary and unsafe. Even the built-in template modifier won't do you much good if you need to edit template multiple times or replace a template...

Directly editing files is completely out of the questions since next upgrade of cart/modules downloads and replaces the whole not just applying changes like the XC4 upgrades do.

[PhilJ]

v4 is alive and kicking, at least where I'm standing anyway