Migrating from Go to Flex

Migrating your marketplace from Sharetribe Go to Sharetribe Flex requires two steps. The first step is building your marketplace with Flex. This usually means working with the code of the Sharetribe Web Template to build your custom marketplace.

The second step is migrating your Go marketplace data. This article details how the data migration process works.

Migrations

Migrating your Go marketplace data happens via a test migration during development and a live migration when moving to production. Our team will work with you throughout the test and live migrations to ensure a smooth transition.

When to request a migration?

You should request a migration when:

• You have a marketplace operating on Sharetribe Go
• You know you want to transfer your Go users and listings to your Flex marketplace. If you’d prefer to re-start your community in Flex, then a migration is not needed.
• You have started developing with Flex

You will work with Sharetribe’s engineers to complete your migration. If you're planning to migrate your data from Go to Flex, you should always start the process with a test migration into your development environment, and ensure everything looks correct there, before doing a live migration. If you want to initiate the (test or live) migration process, you should email flex-support@sharetribe.com with the subject “Go to Flex migration”. Please include your Go marketplace URL and your Flex organization (your organization is displayed in your Console in the top right corner)

What data is migrated?

Listings:

• Title
• Description
• Price (as an number amount)
• Location
• Images
• Custom fields (as listing public data)
• Categories (as listing public data)

What is not migrated automatically: order type data, shipping price, comments, and availability calendar data. In Flex, the transaction process determines how price is calculated and how the order flow works. If you have enabled multiple order types or shipping price in Go and want to migrate the data from these over to Flex, you need to do custom development to ensure the data is transferred and displayed correctly.

User profiles:

• First name
• Last name
• Display name
• Primary email address
• Password hashes (so user can use same credentials to login)
• Profile image
• Phone number (as user protected data)
• Stripe accounts

Migrated profiles do not include username, custom user field data, followers, email preferences or social login credentials. Also note that since Flex does not support PayPal out of the box, no PayPal information is migrated.

If your users used Facebook, Google or LinkedIn to sign up in your Go marketplace, they will still be able to log in to their existing accounts with these in your Flex-powered marketplace, if their Facebook, Google or LinkedIn email address matches the email address in your marketplace. The first time they log in to their existing account in your Flex marketplace with a social login, the login provider will ask them for the same permissions it asked when they originally signed up.

Reviews:

• Grade (thumbs up/down) converted to 5 point scale (stars)
• Text

Transactions:

Past transactions and messages are not migrated currently.

Static page content

Content and styles of the different static pages are not automatically migrated. However, you can manually copy content like your terms and privacy policy and insert them in your new Flex site.

Test Migration

A test migration sets the stage for a successful transition. Having your Go data during Flex development gives you ample time to understand the data transformation occurring during the migration. You will further leverage this data to adapt your customization, including adapting your UI to display your extended data properly and creating the proper filters. We will confirm completion of your test migration. Note that data during the test migration is anonymized: emails, names, addresses and locations are removed or anonymized.

Live migration

A live migration happens when you launch your Flex marketplace.. Please contact us five business days in advance of your planned launch date to ensure all required steps are completed.

Subscription

Going live requires a Flex subscription. In practice, this means that your current Go subscription will be updated to a Flex subscription before the migration date. You need to decide if you wish to subscribe annually (starting at $299/mo) or monthly plan (starting at $369/mo). More info can be found on the Flex pricing page.

Your Go marketplace

In addition to migrating your Go marketplace data to your live environment, our team will work with you to make sure any ongoing transactions are completed successfully.

After you point your DNS settings to your Flex instance, we will make the Go marketplace available at marketplace-name.sharetribe.com. You can communicate to your customers that if they have ongoing transactions, they can follow how they are progressing and finish them there.

We will prepare the legacy Go marketplace so that it doesn't allow new transactions. This is done with the following changes:

• Marketplace is set to invite only
• Users are disallowed to send invites
• Automatic newsletter is disabled
• Listing edits and new transactions are prevented

Your legacy Go marketplace will continue to exist on our servers.

Information required from you to perform a live migration

When you know are five business days or more away from your launch date, please email flex-support@sharetribe.com and include the following information:

• Migration date and time (your Go marketplace will be restricted from new activity at this point; your Flex marketplace will be live after this point)
• Subscription model, annual or monthly payments
• The sender email address: e.g., email@example.com
• The sender email name: e.g., The Marketplace Team.