Migrating from WHMCS

Everything in your WHMCS install — clients, passwords, invoices, tickets, services, saved cards — moves over to ProEcommerce. Your customers log in with the same password they've been using for years. No mass reset email.

What migrates automatically

• Clients — contact details, addresses, custom fields, tags, notes
• Passwords — bcrypt hashes preserved (customers keep their existing password)
• Invoices & transactions — full history, including void/refund records
• Products & services — including recurring billing cycles and next-due dates
• Support tickets — with all replies, internal notes, attachments, and status
• Domains — registrar-linked records, expiration dates, name servers
• Stripe customers — saved cards re-linked via existing Stripe customer IDs
• Email templates — re-mapped to ProEcommerce's template system

What doesn't migrate automatically

• Addon modules (WHMCS third-party plugins are not installed on ProEcommerce)
• Custom theme overrides (the portal is rebuilt with Bootstrap 5)
• Knowledge base articles — these need a one-time export/import
• Affiliate program balances — we'll help reconcile these manually

Pre-flight checklist

Before we start the migration, have these items ready:

1. A database dump of your WHMCS install (mysqldump of the full WHMCS schema)
2. Your WHMCS cc_encryption_hash from configuration.php (needed to decrypt stored cards)
3. Admin access to your Stripe account (to re-link Stripe customer IDs)
4. Your current SMTP provider details (or we'll set you up with MXRoute)
5. A maintenance window of 2–4 hours for the cutover

The migration process

Step 1: Test-run on a staging tenant

We provision a disposable tenant, import your WHMCS dump into it, and hand you admin access. You spot-check 10–20 clients, random invoices, a few tickets. If anything looks off, we adjust the mapping rules and re-run. No impact to your live WHMCS during this phase.

Step 2: Schedule the cutover

Once you're satisfied with the staging import, we schedule a cutover window — typically a Tuesday or Wednesday morning when ticket volume is lowest. We recommend freezing billing actions in WHMCS during the window (we'll send you a checklist).

Step 3: Final dump and import

1. You trigger a final mysqldump of WHMCS
2. We import into your production ProEcommerce tenant
3. We run the verification suite: row counts, sample logins, Stripe link checks
4. DNS is cut over to point your portal domain at ProEcommerce

Step 4: Customer communication

We send a branded email from your address letting customers know the portal has moved, with a link to the new login page. Their password is unchanged. Most customers won't notice anything beyond the fresher UI.

Step 5: Decommission WHMCS

Keep WHMCS in read-only mode for 30 days as a fallback. After that window, assuming no issues, the WHMCS install can be archived and the license cancelled.

Password preservation — how it works

WHMCS stores passwords as bcrypt hashes (cost 10) in the tblclients.password column. ProEcommerce's authentication code recognizes these hashes and validates against them natively. On successful login, we transparently re-hash to Argon2id (the modern standard) and update the stored hash.

// Simplified flow in public/login.php
$row = fetchClientByEmail($email);
if (password_verify($_POST['password'], $row['password_hash'])) {
    // Bcrypt match — upgrade to Argon2id on the fly
    if (password_needs_rehash($row['password_hash'], PASSWORD_ARGON2ID)) {
        updateHash($row['id'], password_hash($_POST['password'], PASSWORD_ARGON2ID));
    }
    startSession($row);
}

Customers never notice. Their password works; over time every active account gets silently upgraded to Argon2id.

Common questions

Can I run WHMCS and ProEcommerce in parallel?

Briefly, yes — during the staging phase. Long-term, no. They'd be sending different invoices to the same customers and collecting payment twice. Pick a cutover date.

What if a client has disputes or chargebacks in flight?

Chargebacks are handled by Stripe, not WHMCS, so they continue uninterrupted. We'll flag any in-progress disputes during the import so your team knows to keep an eye on them in the new dashboard.

Will WHMCS affiliates get their tracking?

We migrate the balances and the affiliate → client relationships. New commission accruals happen in ProEcommerce's affiliate module going forward.

Do you support partial migrations?

Yes — if you want to migrate only active clients (skip churned ones), or only clients above a certain account age, we can filter during the import. Just tell us the criteria.