Magento to Shopify Migration Services

Magento to Shopify
Migration Services

Off self-hosted software and licensing.
The hard part isn’t the data — it’s the catalog.

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Magento merchants moving to Shopify are usually trading capability they don’t use for maintenance they don’t want. Infrastructure, security patching, developer retainers, and Adobe Commerce licensing if you’re on the commercial edition — a largely fixed cost regardless of how much of the platform you actually touch.

Shopify removes most of that. What it asks in return is that your catalog fits its model, and this is where Magento migrations genuinely differ from every other kind.

The three-option problem

Shopify allows three options per product. Magento does not have that limit, and configurable products routinely exceed it. (The Shopify variant limit, explained covers what the limits actually are and the workarounds in detail.)

A product with size, colour, material and finish is entirely ordinary in Magento and does not fit in Shopify. No setting reconciles this. The resolution is a modelling decision with real consequences:

  • Combine attributes into a compound option — “Blue / Oak” as a single value. Simple to implement, and it degrades filtering and reporting.
  • Split into multiple products — one per material, say. Keeps options clean, fragments your catalog and your reviews.
  • Move a dimension into line item properties or an app — preserves the shopping experience, adds a dependency.

There is no universally correct answer. There is a correct answer for your catalog, your merchandising and how your customers actually shop, and arriving at it is the substance of the project rather than a step within it.

Bundled products with optional components and grouped products have similar issues — Shopify has no native equivalent for either.

This is why we run a trial migration early, on a deliberately awkward subset: your most complex configurable, a bundle, a grouped product. It converts the hardest question in the project from a discovery in month three into a decision in week one.

If you’re still on Magento 1

Treat it as urgent. Magento 1 has received no security patches since June 2020. You are running unpatched software that processes card details, and a PCI compliance failure is a question of timing rather than possibility.

Deciding now means choosing your destination on merit. Deciding after a failed audit means choosing under pressure. More on what Magento 1 end of life means and on what Adobe Commerce actually costs.

What else needs handling

Password hashes don’t transfer. Every customer resets. Plan the communication deliberately — an unannounced forced reset across an entire customer base reads as a breach.

URLs change completely. Magento’s category paths and .html suffixes have no Shopify equivalent, and Shopify imposes /products/ and /collections/ prefixes. Every URL on the site changes, which makes the redirect map the single deciding factor in whether you keep your rankings.

Multi-store needs a decision — Shopify Markets, separate expansion stores, or consolidation.

Extensions need equivalents. Most standard functionality has a Shopify app. Heavily customized extension behaviour usually doesn’t, and that gap needs establishing before the project is priced.

B2B needs assessment. If you run wholesale on Magento, compare honestly against Shopify Plus B2B before committing — and against BigCommerce, which does B2B natively on a standard plan.

What we do

Build the redirect map from a live crawl of the Magento store rather than its sitemap. Magento sites accumulate URL variants — layered navigation parameters, category paths, .html suffixes, store-view prefixes — and sitemaps consistently miss classes of URL that are earning impressions. Every rule is verified before launch, in both trailing-slash forms.

Remodel the catalog, starting with the trial migration described above.

Audit the extension stack before scoping, so the project’s real shape is known up front.

Build the storefront as an Online Store 2.0 theme, so your team can merchandise without a developer. More on Shopify design and development.

Record the baseline — traffic, rankings, conversion rate, Core Web Vitals — before launch, so afterwards you’re measuring rather than arguing.

When Shopify isn’t the right destination

If your catalog fundamentally resists three options. Some product ranges genuinely don’t compress, and forcing them produces a catalog nobody can merchandise. BigCommerce is more permissive here, and worth comparing before you commit.

If B2B is the core of the business. BigCommerce does it natively; Shopify does it on Plus. That’s a cost difference and a capability difference.

If pricing logic is deeply conditional. ERP-driven, real-time, heavily rule-based pricing strains hosted platforms generally. That’s a headless conversation, and we’ll run it honestly rather than assume the answer.

Start with the catalog

Tell us how your products are structured — how many configurables, how many attributes on the worst of them, whether bundles are involved. That tells us more about what this migration will cost than the number of SKUs does.

Schedule Your Call

More on how we run migrations on the ecommerce migration services page, or read the migration checklist. Still deciding? Magento vs Shopify is the honest comparison.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a Magento to Shopify migration cost?
It varies more than merchants expect, and the variable is almost never the data transfer. It's the catalog. A Magento store with straightforward simple products migrates quickly. One built on configurable products with four or more attributes, bundles with optional components, and grouped products needs remodelling before anything moves — and that work is the project. Get a trial migration run on a representative subset before accepting any fixed price.
What's the hardest part technically?
Shopify allows three options per product. Magento configurable products routinely use more, and there is no setting that reconciles this. A product with size, colour, material and finish does not fit, and the resolution is a modelling decision: combine attributes into a compound option, split into multiple products, or move the extra dimension into line item properties or an app. Each has consequences for merchandising, reporting and how customers actually shop. This decision is the migration.
We're on Magento 1. How urgent is this?
Urgent. Magento 1 reached end of life in June 2020 and receives no security patches. You are running unpatched software that handles payment details, and PCI compliance becomes a matter of when rather than if. The advantage of deciding now rather than after a failed audit is that you choose your destination on merit instead of under time pressure.
Do we need Shopify Plus?
Not usually, and it's worth resisting the assumption. Plus earns its cost for genuine B2B — company profiles, customer-specific catalogs, payment terms — for checkout customization through Shopify Functions, or at volume where the fee structure changes the arithmetic. Many Magento merchants assume Plus is the equivalent tier because Magento Commerce was enterprise software. Standard Shopify covers a great deal of what a mid-sized Magento store actually uses.
What happens to our multi-store setup?
It needs an explicit decision. Depending on why the stores exist, they map to Shopify Markets for currency and language, to separate expansion stores, or get consolidated outright. Markets handles international selling from one store well. Genuinely distinct catalogs or brands usually want separate stores, which multiplies the operational overhead — so this is a commercial decision, not a technical one, and it belongs in the first conversation.
Will our extensions have Shopify equivalents?
Most common functionality does, because Shopify's app ecosystem is large. What rarely survives is heavily customized extension behaviour — the pricing rule someone wrote in 2019, the ERP connector built for your specific workflow. We audit that before scoping, because it determines whether the project is a migration or a migration plus a development programme. We build apps and integrations ourselves, so the second is genuinely on the table rather than a reason to say no.