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Differences between Altera and Matrixify

Your existing spreadsheets work as-is, plus more data types, better error handling, and tools like a CLI and Google Sheets integration

Updated this week

Both Altera and Matrixify are Shopify apps for importing and exporting store data using spreadsheets. Altera supports the same spreadsheet format, so your existing files work without reformatting. On top of that, Altera adds support for more data types, better error reporting, and features like a CLI, Google Drive integration, and data transformations.

Supported Data Types

Both Matrixify and Altera support exporting and importing the following data types:

  • Products

  • Orders

  • Customers

  • Blog Posts (articles)

  • Files

  • Smart Collections

  • Manual Collections

  • Pages

  • Activity

  • Metaobjects

  • Redirects

  • Menus

  • Shop Data

  • Discounts

  • Payouts

  • Companies

  • Draft Orders

Additionally, Altera supports the following data types not supported by Matrixify:

  • Catalogs

  • Inventory Transfers

  • Locations

  • Metafield Definitions

  • Metaobject Definitions

  • Translations

Supported Fields

In addition to the export/import fields that Matrixify supports, Altera supports the following fields:

  • Export, import and adjust customer's store credit balance including expiration date

  • Payment Terms for Orders and Draft Orders

  • Exporting and importing unit prices for products

  • Presentment prices (order currency) for orders and line items

  • Exporting and importing Country-Specific HS Codes for products

  • Exporting and importing Linked product options (variant options connected to metaobjects)

Large File Support

Altera handles large imports and exports without file size or row count limitations. Exports with hundreds of thousands of rows are split into manageable files automatically, and imports process in batches so you don't need to manually chunk your spreadsheets.

Additional Features

  • Concurrent jobs: Run multiple imports and exports at the same time on all plans

  • Command-line tool (CLI): Run imports and exports from your terminal, automate workflows, and integrate Altera into your development process (available on Developer and Pro plans)

  • Data Transformations: Automatically restructure exported spreadsheets (rename, reorder, extract, combine columns, and more)

  • Full Google Drive and Google Sheets integration: Import directly from and export directly to Google Drive and Google Sheets. Matrixify only supports Google Sheets via the IMPORTURL() function, which has size limitations, requires refreshing the page to see the latest changes, and no formatting.

  • Sales channel publishing: Control publication status for products and collections across individual sales channels (Online Store, POS, Facebook, etc.)

  • Product category metafield migration: When migrating products between stores, Altera automatically enables product category metafield definitions and creates the required metaobject entries on the destination store. This means you can migrate products with category attributes (like color pattern, material, or style) without manually setting up the metaobject definitions first.

  • Automatic discounts with customer targeting: Import and export automatic discounts with customer targeting (by email address or customer segment)

  • Clearer import status reporting: Altera has four import result statuses - OK, Warning, Skipped, and Failed - so you can tell at a glance what happened to each row. "Warning" means the item was saved but some data was skipped (e.g., an invalid metafield value). "Skipped" means the row was intentionally skipped because it didn't match the command (e.g., using NEW on an item that already exists).

  • Smarter metafield error handling: When one metafield in a row has an invalid value, Altera skips just that metafield and still saves the rest of the row. The skipped metafield is reported as a warning with a clear error code.

  • Rich text metafield conversion: Automatically converts rich text metafields (rich_text_field) to Shopify's JSON format on import

  • Editable scheduled jobs: Edit the scheduled time and interval for scheduled jobs after creation. Matrixify requires you to delete and recreate the schedule to make changes.

  • Blog and Blog Post metafields: Export metafields for both Blogs and Blog Posts. Matrixify only supports Blog Post metafields.

  • WebDAV remote connections: Connect to WebDAV servers for importing and exporting data, with automatic HTTPS/HTTP detection and wildcard file matching. Matrixify does not support WebDAV.

  • Automatic CSV delimiter detection: Detects and handles comma, tab, semicolon, space, colon, and pipe delimiters

  • Phone number formatting: Format phone numbers in exports as strict international (E.164), readable international, or national format

  • File name format: Choose whether file and image references in exports use the file name (default) or the full CDN URL. Helps when moving data between stores - use file names for portable values or CDN URL for direct links. Applies to metaobject file fields and file reference metafields on products, orders, and other types.

If you come across some action that you can do in Matrixify but not in Altera, please let us know. We are always looking for ways to improve Altera.

Feature Roadmap

We're actively working on new features. If you have suggestions, please let us know.

  • WooCommerce migration: Import data from WooCommerce to Shopify

Related Articles
Metafield Definition Fields
Metaobject Fields
How to Transfer Metafields Between Shopify Stores
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How to Sync Google Sheets Data to Shopify with Altera
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