Migrating from 1C-Bitrix in 2026: Sanctions, Risks and a Step-by-Step Plan for Moving to WordPress or OpenCart

Only a few years ago, 1C-Bitrix was the standard choice for corporate websites and online stores that exchanged data with 1C. Those sites still work today, but their owners find themselves in an awkward position: the platform is Russian, there is no legal way to get updates from Ukraine, the pool of developers keeps shrinking, and the question “what is your site built on?” comes up more and more often when counterparties vet a business.

Here we look at what exactly happened to Bitrix in Ukraine, what a business that stays on it is risking, and how to move a website or online store to another platform without losing content, products or Google rankings.

Short answer

A Bitrix site will not switch itself off, but without a licence it receives no security updates — and a Ukrainian business cannot legally pay the Russian developer to renew one. Moving to WordPress, OpenCart, WooCommerce or another CMS takes 2–3 weeks for a company website and 4–6 weeks for an online store. The key to a safe migration is transferring data straight from the database rather than by hand, plus 301 redirects from every old URL to its new one.

While the new site is being built, the old one has to keep running reliably, so it makes sense to host it somewhere that supports the PHP version it needs.

What happened to Bitrix in Ukraine

• On 15 April 2023, a presidential decree put into effect a decision of the National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) imposing 10-year sanctions on hundreds of companies and individuals, including Bitrix24. On the same day, the sanctions against 1C, in force since 2017, were extended for 10 years.
• From 1 June 2023, the Bitrix24 cloud service became unavailable to users in Ukraine, while the boxed (self-hosted) versions kept working under a restricted licence and with some features missing.
• In early January 2026, the State Special Communications Service added 1C to its list of prohibited software; overall, the list grew from 416 to 880 items.
• On 30 June 2026, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) failed to pass Bill No. 13505 on a phased ban of hostile software by 2030 — it did not get enough votes.

1C and 1C-Bitrix are different products, but they come from the same Russian ecosystem, and government bodies and large companies treat them the same way. As of October 2026, there is no general legal ban on private businesses using a Bitrix website. However, sanctions, the ban on payments to Russia and the growing list of prohibited software make Bitrix a platform with no future. This article is not legal advice: for your specific situation, consult a lawyer.

The risks of staying on Bitrix

• Security. Without an active licence, the core and modules are not updated. New vulnerabilities in old code stay unpatched, and sites on popular platforms are regularly hit by automated attacks.
• Reputation and contracts. Large clients, public-sector customers and foreign partners increasingly ask what software a business runs on. Russian software in your answer raises questions you could do without in a counterparty check or a tender.
• Developers. Ukrainian studios are dropping Bitrix, so further development is getting more expensive and you become more dependent on a single contractor.
• PHP and hosting. Older versions of the Bitrix core are designed for PHP 7.4 and earlier, and support for those PHP versions ended long ago. When your host switches them off, the site may stop loading.
• Integrations. Payment and delivery modules are updated for new APIs, but without a licence those updates are not available for Bitrix.

What to switch to from Bitrix

For more on choosing a platform for an online store, see our article on which platform to choose for an online store.

Step-by-step migration plan

1. Audit the site and its traffic

Map out the site: sections, infoblocks, page types, the catalogue with its SKUs (trade offers) and properties, modules, integrations and forms. Separately, export from Google Search Console and Google Analytics a list of the pages that bring in traffic and enquiries: these are the ones it matters most to keep unchanged.

2. Choose the platform and the structure

Based on the audit, choose a CMS and decide which sections move over as they are and which get merged or removed. Don’t change everything at once: a new design, a new structure and new URLs on the same day is the surest way to lose traffic without knowing why.

3. Stable hosting for the transition

A migration takes weeks, and the old site has to keep working the whole time. If your current host is threatening to switch off old PHP versions, first move Bitrix somewhere you can choose the version it needs. Our 1C-Bitrix hosting offers PHP from 5.6 to 8.5, and the move itself is free.

4. The design on the new platform

Carry the current design over to a template on the new CMS — visitors should see a site they recognise. If a redesign is needed, it is best done as a separate stage after the move.

5. Migrating data from the database

Data is transferred by scripts straight from the Bitrix database, not copied by hand:

• infoblock sections and elements become pages, posts and categories in the new CMS;
• products with SKUs become products with variants (size, colour and so on);
• properties become catalogue attributes and filters;
• files from the /upload/ folder are moved together with the links to them in the content;
• SEO fields: titles, descriptions, keywords and URL settings;
• if needed, customers and order history. User passwords usually cannot be transferred directly, so customers are invited to set a new password.

6. SEO: a URL map and 301 redirects

Build an “old URL → new URL” table for every page, category and product. Wherever possible, keep the URLs unchanged; where you can’t, set up a 301 redirect from each old URL to the new page closest in content. Google treats mass redirects to the site’s home page as errors, and those pages drop out of search results. How redirects work and how 301 differs from 302 is covered in a separate article.

7. Integrations

Set up the exchange with 1C or BAS — catalogue, prices, stock and orders — via the standard CommerceML protocol or an exchange module for the new platform. Then come payments, delivery, the CRM, Google Analytics 4, Google Ads conversions and ad pixels. How to keep prices on your site from going stale is covered in our article on syncing your site with 1C and other ERP systems.

8. Launch and monitoring

Switch the domain over on a quiet day, submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console and check the report for 404 errors every day. For the first 4–8 weeks, keep an eye on rankings, traffic and enquiries. Don’t delete the old site for at least a month — you will need it to cross-check data.

How to keep your Google rankings

• don’t change the domain and, where possible, the page URLs;
• carry over page titles, meta descriptions, H1s, image alt text and structured data;
• set up 301 redirects from every changed URL, including product and filter pages that get traffic;
• check that robots.txt does not block the new site and that the test copy is closed to indexing;
• update the sitemap and the links in your Google Business Profile, ads and social media;
• check the speed: moving to a modern CMS should make the site faster.

Our free tools will help before launch: the 301 redirect generator, the redirect checker and the sitemap validator.

How much the migration costs and how long it takes

The final price depends on the number of pages and products, the integrations and whether we carry the design over as it is. A new design, exchange with 1C or BAS and non-standard modules are quoted separately. Details are on the 1C-Bitrix migration service page.

Common mistakes

• launching the new site without 301 redirects — so the old URLs in Google return 404s;
• migrating products without their properties and SKUs — leaving the catalogue filters empty;
• losing the infoblocks’ SEO fields, so every page ends up with the same title;
• forgetting about the files in /upload/ — manuals, price lists and certificates disappear;
• not setting up the 1C exchange — so prices on the new site are out of date by the very next day;
• deleting the old site right after launch — leaving nothing to cross-check the data against.

Conclusion

You can stay on 1C-Bitrix in 2026, but it is a decision with an expiry date: no updates, no way to renew the licence legally and fewer and fewer developers. Moving to WordPress, OpenCart or another CMS is a project of a few weeks, and if the data and redirects are migrated properly, visitors and Google will hardly notice it.

If you would like your site assessed, contact BB STUDIO: we will audit it, recommend a platform and quote a price before work begins. And we can move your current Bitrix site to our hosting free of charge right away.