Shopify to BigCommerce Migration Services

Shopify to BigCommerce
Migration Services

Usually driven by B2B, catalog scale,
or what you’re paying per order.

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This migration runs in the less common direction, and the merchants making it usually have a specific reason rather than a general dissatisfaction. That’s a good sign — it tends to mean the move is worth making.

We have been building on BigCommerce since 2010, which makes us one of the longest-running agencies on the platform. We also build on Shopify, so the comparison below is not a sales pitch for one side.

The three reasons that hold up

B2B outgrew Shopify. The most common driver. BigCommerce does B2B natively — customer groups, price lists, quantity breaks, purchase orders — where Shopify needs Plus and usually apps on top. If wholesale is a serious part of your business, this is a real structural difference rather than a marketing one.

The catalog got large. Faceted search, deep category structures and large product counts are handled better natively. Shopify’s three-option variant limit also becomes a genuine constraint on configurable products, and merchants frequently discover their catalog has been modelled around it.

Per-order economics. BigCommerce doesn’t charge platform transaction fees on top of payment processing. At low volume this is noise; at high volume on Shopify without Shopify Payments it is a real number worth putting in a spreadsheet.

What you give up

Worth being straight about, because these are genuine.

The app ecosystem is smaller. If your operation depends on a Shopify app with no BigCommerce equivalent, that dependency has to be resolved before you commit — not discovered during the build.

Fewer people know the platform. Hiring and contracting for BigCommerce is harder than for Shopify. That’s a real operational cost.

Shopify’s checkout is excellent. BigCommerce’s is good. Record your baseline conversion rate and watch it deliberately rather than assuming it transfers.

What breaks specifically

The app stack. Reviews, loyalty, subscriptions, wishlists and bundling each need an equivalent, a custom implementation, or a decision to drop. This audit is usually the largest single piece of work, and it should happen before the project is priced rather than during it.

Every URL. Shopify’s /products/ and /collections/ prefixes don’t exist on BigCommerce, so the entire URL structure changes. The redirect map is the deciding factor.

Theme customizations. Liquid doesn’t port to Stencil. The storefront gets rebuilt, which is an opportunity to drop the accumulated patches nobody can safely remove.

What we do

Build the redirect map from a live crawl of the Shopify store — not the sitemap — covering every URL with traffic, impressions or links, verified in both trailing-slash forms.

Audit the app stack first, so the hardest part of the project is understood before anyone commits to a timeline.

Rebuild B2B properly using customer groups, price lists and quantity breaks — the part of BigCommerce that most justifies the move.

Build the storefront as a Stencil theme with merchandising control left in your hands, plus custom Page Builder widgets so your marketing team isn’t blocked behind a developer.

Record the baseline before launch so afterwards you’re measuring rather than guessing.

If you should stay on Shopify

We’ll tell you. For a straightforward DTC store with a modest catalog and no wholesale, this migration usually isn’t worth the disruption, and we would rather say that now.

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More on how we run migrations on the ecommerce migration services page, on BigCommerce development, or on moving the other way — BigCommerce to Shopify. Still deciding? Shopify vs BigCommerce is the honest comparison.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do merchants move from Shopify to BigCommerce?
Three reasons account for most of it. B2B requirements that Shopify meets only on Plus and with apps, where BigCommerce has customer groups, price lists and quantity breaks natively. Large catalogs, where BigCommerce's faceted search and category handling are stronger. And per-order economics, since BigCommerce does not charge transaction fees on top of payment processing. For a straightforward DTC store, none of these apply and the move usually isn't worth making.
What's genuinely better about BigCommerce?
Native B2B, large-catalog handling, and the absence of platform transaction fees. Also a more generous API, which matters if you integrate heavily with an ERP or PIM. What's worse: a smaller app ecosystem, and fewer people on the market who know the platform. Both are real costs and worth weighing honestly.
What breaks in this migration?
Apps, mostly. A large share of Shopify storefront behaviour lives in apps — reviews, loyalty, subscriptions, wishlists, bundling — and each needs a BigCommerce equivalent, a custom build, or a decision to drop it. Auditing that stack is usually the largest piece of work in the project. Beyond apps, Shopify's three-option variant limit means your catalog may have been modelled around a constraint that no longer applies, which is an opportunity rather than a problem.
Will our checkout conversion suffer?
It's the right question to ask, since Shopify's checkout is genuinely excellent and a meaningful part of what you're paying for. BigCommerce's optimised one-page checkout is good and not identical. We recommend recording your baseline conversion rate before launch and watching it deliberately afterwards, rather than assuming parity in either direction.
Do you migrate in both directions?
Yes, regularly. We run BigCommerce to Shopify moves as well, and off both to headless when the platform storefront has become the constraint. We make a living on all of them, which is the only reason a recommendation from us is worth anything.