Comparative CMS Migration Tools Research: aisite vs FG Joomla to WordPress

Selecting the right CMS to house and manage your web project is only the first step — the real challenges arise while migrating content to your new CMS. The article takes a close look at two automated migration services that are currently floating around the web – aisite migration service and FG Joomla to WordPress. Both solutions aim to accelerate the migration process making it accessible for everyone, even those with little to no skills.

Content migration is an important part of any website or intranet redevelopment. Truth be told – it is one of the hardest parts of implementing a new CMS and the time spent is significant – however, there are benefits as well. Moving from one version to another is a chance to re-think and/or redesign the site breathing a new life into a web project and, therefore, making it even more successful than ever before.

However, not for nothing folks in CMS world try to avoid this endeavour – it’s quite an arduous and time-consuming process that requires a stellar programming experience to be done properly. The traditional solution is to write migration scripts, or manually cut and paste the content. But these slow and error-prone solutions offer limited success. As a rule of thumb, you can estimate 20 to 60 minutes per page to make it happen manually. However, if you use online services specializing in web content migrations, you can easily expect to cut that time in half or even more. The option of an automated migration of content from the old site to the new site is clearly an attractive one. It involves little or no manual effort slashing the time and resources needed for migration.

Now comes the most interesting part – comparative analyses of two online migration tools – aisite and FG Joomla to WordPress plugin. Let’s try to compare these tools in terms of:

• connection;
• styles;
• data base;
• duration;
• application;
• cost.

The tools differs significantly in the way they establish the connection between the migrated websites. aisite service requires only a bridge to be installed. The task is matter of a few simple steps expecting no skills to perform it. In case of FG – the database access, password and prefix are necessary to establish the connection between sites. Generally, the process is relatively complex.

Speaking about the styles – both tools are not capable of migrating styles. The reason is that different CMS solutions have different template structure. However, aisite converter provides its users with a Service Packages aiming to help users migrate their websites taking into account all their needs and requirements.

In terms of database (content types) – aisite tool also takes the cake. In Demo version the tool imports most of the content types (users, images, menus, modules, etc.) to the target platform as closely as possible to what you had previously in the source. Furthermore, Service Packages allow to migrate websites to any exact specifications of a client. FG, alternatively, imports only articles, images and categories in its Demo migration version.

Speaking about the duration of the process – FG makes its best performing the conversion in a blink of eyes. aisite, contrastingly, requires a bit longer (though, no more than 15-30 min depending on a website size).

When it comes to application – aisite converter has leapfrogged ahead of FG allowing to migrate content pages, images and links from any CMS options (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.). FG, on the other hand, performs migrations only from Joomla to WordPress.

If cost is of concern – FG Joomla to WordPress plugin has 2 versions to choose from (the free and the premium one). While premium does support all content types to be migrated to the target platform, with the free version be ready that only several options are supported for migration. Despite the fact that aisite has no free version, the tool is very reasonably priced (generally, prices start from $9). Besides, you may estimate the cost of the migration before the procedure starts using the Estimator.

To conclude, have a look at the table below to see the general overview of these two migration services:

Hopefully, all aforementioned information will help you to make the right choice between these two migration solutions. Happy migrating, folks!