Magento: Import Products Fast via Magmi, a Free Product Import Tool

The Magento CMS has a great set of tools for product management and importing, but in cases where the product import count surpasses hundreds, thousands or even over ten-thousands, Magento's weakness surfaces. Its importing capabilities are sluggish and even with Dataflow, its proclaimed data-import enhancement, importing mass product data remains a very precarious undertaking.

The average importing process of 200-300 products, not including the setup of the importable CSV file (which, alone, can take hours), takes about 1-2 hours on an average server, followed by a manual confirming of the imported products due to Magento Dataflow's lack of documentation for errors during importing. The abundance of options to import Tier-Pricing, Configurable Products, as well as Related-, Upsell-, Crosssell-, and many other Products variations and features, furthers its inadequacy in efficient bulk product handling.

Magento's positive reputation among e-Commerce CMS's in combination with its lack of data-entry capabilities, other than its default product creation features, leave room for many commercial plugins and extensions that are equally hazardous and, yet, far overpriced.

Fortunately, after researching and testing the most popular methods in the Magento Community, both Commercial and Free, in search for the most appropriate solution in mass product handling consequently led to, what we think may be, the best and fastest methods to import products in bulk.

Magento Product Importing User Guide:

The bulk product importing tools and methods we will be describing are covered in the following steps:

Magmi, the Free Extension for Fast Magento Importing

For those who haven't heard of Magmi before, it is a free Fast Product Importer extension for Magento, that is free and usable on any of your Magento Data Entry projects. It offers very fast Product Imports, averaging less than 5 minutes per 500 products (which is less time than what Magento requires to index them). You can Download Magmi at SourceForge, where the main extension development occurs, or at Magmi's Github Repository.

In addition to the main Magmi download, you will require the Extra Plugins, which carries the image importing and other useful features. You can find the Magmi Extra Plugins repository here.

Installing Magmi

After downloading the newest Magmi files you will require access to your Magento websites root folder, typically using FTP or SSH.

MAGMI  MAGento Mass Importer  by Dweeves   version 0.7.18beta2
  1. Unzip the downloaded Magmi.zip folder and upload the unzipped magmi folder to the Magento root install folder.
  2. Once successfully uploaded, you will find its dashboard at youdomain.com/magmi/web/magmi.php.
  3. Next, click on the choose file button (see image) to upload the entire plugin .zip file, and press Upload Plugins. The same can be done with the Utility Plugins, although those are often needed in rare cases.
  4. Now, you only have to setup your database information to match the target Magento site's database, and press Save global parameters. You can get this data quickly from your local.xml file, in your {root}/app/etc folder.

Importing Products with Magmi

Magmi is much more tolerant than Magento's Dataflow tool and will therefore create the products even if it fails to find the image or oftentimes even with empty fields that are normally required for Dataflow. The logs during the import process also provide sufficient data to make the debugging much smoother.

I'm a developer at Maximus Business.
  • Laura
    Magmi is a good product but I'm afraid that your article is not objective. If you want that I take into account your post you should compare more tools. Worth pointing out that, that there is another great software for Magento data upload. I invite you to test Store Manager for Magento application for really speedy import of all product types with on the fly reindex.

    Said on Feb 4, 2013 by Laura - Reply
    • Sunanda
      Magmi doesn't cost 500$.

      Said on Sep 27, 2013 by Sunanda - Reply
    • Oklahuma
      I have used the trial version of Store Manager and it works fine, useful, but I am going to try Magmi now, because as the author and others expressed, it cost way too much. Perhaps try lowering the price to between 50-60 dollars and you may be able to sell many more to make up for price drop.

      Said on Sep 28, 2013 by Oklahuma - Reply
      • Sarah
        Hello! You can try this extension http://amasty.com/magento-product-manager-toolkit.html. It's more expensive than $60 but still it worth it.

        Said on Sep 1, 2014 by Sarah - Reply
  • nvnguyen
    Hi Maximilian! I'm using magmi now! When i import product by magmi, sometimes it run very fast, sometimes it run very slow. what reason effects to speed ? any recommend. Thank so much!

    Said on Feb 7, 2013 by nvnguyen - Reply
  • Ankit
    Hi, I want to import 1 lakh products with magmi import. How much time will it take to complete import process.

    Said on Feb 12, 2013 by Ankit - Reply
  • Sugan
    Hi, i am using magento Enterprises version 1.12 i want to uploading products using magmi. i have 64000/ SKU So my magento is taking too time so i want to use Magmi process for product uploading.....Kindly let me know if any solution for magento Enterprises... Thanks in advance...

    Said on Apr 9, 2013 by Sugan - Reply
  • The Magic of Making up Review
    Appreciate the recommendation. Will try it out.

    Said on Apr 9, 2013 by The Magic of Making up Review - Reply
  • PoidsTotal
    Store Manager for Magento may be a good product too, but I think the first thing we're looking for here is a free product that does a great job. I'm on my way to try magmi.

    Said on May 2, 2013 by PoidsTotal - Reply
  • Vikram Rout
    Thanks for sharing good information about store manager for Magento.

    Said on May 7, 2013 by Vikram Rout - Reply
  • Oklahuma
    Is there any tutorial for actually using magmi?

    Said on Sep 28, 2013 by Oklahuma - Reply
  • antony
    I gave Store Manager a go (about 1 year ago). It generates alot of SQL code for even quite minor changes. I was concerned about corruption and did start to see some weird stuff, that was difficult to pinpoint. I did not feel comfortable using it from that point and got a decent grid for the Admin and an import tool for bulk operations. I'll have a look at Magmi next time I need to to a bulk import.

    Said on Dec 9, 2013 by antony - Reply
  • pardeep
    Hi Please help me its urgent i have installed Magmi it gives an error Update Magmi Update Disabled Zip library not available, Upgrade/Upload function are not enabled Kindly give me solution this is the link Please Please do favor Thanks in advance

    Said on Apr 7, 2014 by pardeep - Reply
  • shiazk
    I'm new to magento can someone tell me where exactly I have to upload the unziped magmi folder? what is the magento root install folder? can someone please help me.

    Said on May 24, 2014 by shiazk - Reply
  • Lloyd
    I think what's missing here is the Catalog URL Rewrites.

    Said on Mar 2, 2015 by Lloyd - Reply
  • Alex Morco
    Thanks for sharing this article, I have tried to optimize it manually but, while updating attributes I got an error, I applied Cloudways full page cache extension, https://www.cloudways.com/en/magento-full-page-cache.php. Its working good now and load time is improved.

    Said on Feb 1, 2018 by Alex Morco - Reply

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