The Complete Magento to Shopify Migration Checklist (2026)
TL;DR
Migrating from Magento to Shopify involves far more than moving data between platforms. This checklist glossary defines every critical term across the migration workflow, from pre-planning audits and EAV-to-metafield mapping through 301 redirects, DNS cutover, and post-launch monitoring. Incomplete migrations cause 20 to 40% organic traffic drops, so every phase demands attention. Use this as both a reference dictionary and a sequential action plan.
Magento to Shopify migration is one of the most common replatforming paths in ecommerce right now, and for good reason. Adobe’s acquisition slowed Magento’s development pace. The developer talent pool has shrunk. Self-hosting costs keep climbing. And Shopify’s feature set now covers roughly 95% of common Magento use cases.
But the migration itself is where things go wrong. As one practitioner from Studio Ubique put it: “Migrating platforms is not a fresh start. It is a controlled demolition with a live audience watching your rankings.”
According to a Semrush analysis of site migrations, organic traffic drops of 20 to 40% in the first month are common when redirect mapping is incomplete. Most of that traffic doesn’t come back quickly.
This glossary-format checklist defines every key term you’ll encounter during migration, organized by workflow phase rather than alphabetically. Each entry explains what the term means, why it matters, and what to do about it. Whether you’re a store owner, project manager, or marketer evaluating this move, this is your decoder ring.
Before starting any migration, it’s worth getting a clear picture of your current store’s strengths and gaps. A free ecommerce brand audit can surface issues you’ll want to address before, not after, the platform switch.
Pre-Migration Planning Terms
These are the terms and concepts that come up before a single line of data moves. Skip this phase and you’ll pay for it later, usually in missed products, broken integrations, or budget overruns.
Magento Audit
What it means: A full inventory of everything living in your Magento installation: products, customers, orders, extensions, custom code, CMS pages, and media assets.
Why it matters: You can’t migrate what you haven’t cataloged. Stores routinely discover orphaned products, deprecated extensions, or custom functionality buried in template files that nobody documented.
What to do: Export your complete product count, customer count, order history volume, and a list of every installed extension. Document any custom code (shipping calculators, pricing rules, checkout modifications). This becomes your migration scope document.
Data Backup
What it means: A complete snapshot of your Magento database and media files, stored externally (AWS S3, Google Cloud, or a physical drive) before export begins.
Why it matters: Migrations can corrupt source data. If your Magento instance is also your only copy, you’re one bad export away from losing everything.
What to do: Run a full database dump and copy all media files to external storage. Verify the backup by restoring it to a staging environment. Do this before touching anything else.
EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value)
What it means: Magento’s database architecture for storing product attributes. Instead of one row per product with fixed columns, EAV spreads attribute data across multiple tables. It’s flexible but complex.
Why it matters: Shopify doesn’t use EAV. Every custom product attribute in Magento needs to be mapped to a Shopify metafield. If you skip this mapping, you lose product data that customers rely on, things like material type, care instructions, or technical specifications.
What to do: Export all EAV attributes from Magento. Create a mapping spreadsheet that pairs each attribute with its Shopify metafield equivalent. Prioritize attributes that appear on product pages or are used for filtering.
Configurable Product
What it means: Magento’s parent-child product structure where a “parent” product (like a t-shirt) has multiple “child” variants (size, color combinations).
Why it matters: Shopify handles this differently. Shopify allows up to 2,048 variants per product as of October 2025 (up from the old 100-variant ceiling), but it still caps you at three option types per product. So a product with size, color, and material works. Add a fourth option and you need a workaround. Many migration guides written before late 2025 still cite the 100-variant limit, which is outdated.
What to do: Audit your configurable products. Flag any with more than three option types. For those, decide whether to split them into separate products or use a Shopify app that extends option handling.
SKU Reconciliation
What it means: Verifying that every sellable item in Magento maps one-to-one to a Shopify variant with the correct inventory count and location assignment.
Why it matters: Mismatched SKUs mean overselling, underselling, or phantom products cluttering your catalog.
What to do: Export your Magento SKU list with inventory quantities. After import, run a comparison report against your Shopify product list. Every SKU should match. No exceptions.
Extension Audit
What it means: Cataloging every Magento module (plugin/extension) and determining whether it maps to a native Shopify feature, a Shopify app, or requires a custom rebuild.
Why it matters: Roughly 90% of Magento extensions don’t have direct Shopify equivalents. This is where migration scope balloons and budgets break.
What to do: Create a three-column spreadsheet: Magento Extension | Shopify Equivalent | Action Required (native, app, custom build, or deprecate). Prioritize revenue-critical extensions first.
Migration Budget
What it means: The realistic cost range for your specific migration, based on store complexity.
Why it matters: Most migration cost isn’t in the data move itself. It’s in the theme rebuild, integration rewiring, SEO preservation, and post-launch stabilization. Underbudgeting is the norm, not the exception.
What to do: Use these 2026 benchmarks: Magento Open Source migrations typically cost $5,000 to $40,000 over 6 to 12 weeks. Adobe Commerce migrations to Shopify Plus range from $25,000 to $250,000+ for B2B-heavy, ERP-integrated replatforms. A straightforward migration with under 1,000 products and a purchased theme takes four to eight weeks. Complex or enterprise setups may take three to six months.
Data Migration Terms
This phase is where your Magento data actually moves to Shopify. The sequence matters. The tools matter. And several hidden constraints will bite you if you’re not prepared.
CSV Export/Import
What it means: The file format bridge between Magento and Shopify. You export Magento data as CSV files, transform the column structure to match Shopify’s expected format, then import.
Why it matters: Column headers don’t match between platforms. Magento might call a field “special_price” while Shopify expects “compare_at_price.” Without careful mapping, data lands in the wrong place or gets dropped entirely.
What to do: Download Shopify’s CSV template. Map each Magento export column to its Shopify equivalent. Clean the data (remove HTML artifacts, fix encoding issues, standardize formats) before import.
Data Mapping
What it means: The process of aligning Magento fields (attributes, categories, tier pricing, customer groups) to their Shopify equivalents (metafields, collections, B2B catalogs).
Why it matters: This is the intellectual core of the migration. Get mapping wrong and your product pages display incorrect information, your collections break, and your pricing logic fails.
What to do: Build a comprehensive mapping document before any data moves. Include every product attribute, customer field, and category. Have someone from your merchandising team verify the mapping, not just your developer.
Import Sequence
What it means: The required order for importing data: products first, then customers, then historical orders.
Why it matters: Referential integrity. Orders reference both products and customers. If you import orders before products exist in Shopify, the order records can’t link to anything. The same goes for customers.
What to do: Follow the sequence strictly. Products first (all variants, images, metafields, pricing). Customers second (linked to the product catalog). Historical orders last.
Metafield
What it means: Shopify’s flexible custom data container. It replaces Magento’s custom attributes for storing extra product information like ingredients, dimensions, warranty details, or anything not covered by Shopify’s default product fields.
Why it matters: If you had 50 custom attributes in Magento, you need 50 metafield definitions in Shopify. Without them, that data simply disappears from your store.
What to do: Define metafield namespaces and keys in Shopify before importing products. Make sure your theme references these metafields so they actually display on product pages. After migration, this is a good time to optimize your product detail pages for conversion rather than just replicating what you had.
Customer Password Migration
What it means: The impossibility of transferring customer passwords from Magento to Shopify.
Why it matters: Passwords are one-way hashed. There is no decryption key, no workaround, no exception. Every single customer needs to create a new password after migration. Practitioners on forums report this generates the highest post-launch support ticket volume alongside order-related confusion.
As one practitioner from Ringly.io flagged: “Customer passwords are hashed one-way with no recovery possible. Every customer needs a reset email at launch.”
What to do: Plan your communication in advance. Draft a “Welcome to our new store” email that includes a password reset link. Use a Bulk Account Inviter app to send these en masse at launch. Don’t treat this as an afterthought.
Delta Migration / Delta Sync
What it means: Capturing orders, customers, and inventory changes that occur during the DNS cutover window (typically 24 to 48 hours) when your old Magento store is still processing transactions but your Shopify store isn’t fully live yet.
Why it matters: Without delta migration, you get an “order gap”: orders placed during cutover exist in Magento but not in Shopify. Customers can’t find their orders. Your inventory counts diverge.
What to do: Plan for a delta sync process. Either freeze orders on Magento during cutover (risky for high-volume stores) or run a final data pull after DNS propagation completes and manually import the gap orders.
Variant Limit
What it means: Shopify raised its per-product variant cap to 2,048 in October 2025, retiring the old 100-variant ceiling. However, the three-option-type limit per product remains.
Why it matters: This change is underreported. Many migration guides still reference the 100-variant limit. If you’ve been told your complex catalog can’t work on Shopify, that information may be outdated. The constraint that still bites is options: you get size, color, and one more, not four.
What to do: Recount your variants against the 2,048 cap. Flag products with more than three option types for restructuring.
Migration Tools
Not all tools are equal. Your choice depends on catalog size, technical comfort, and whether you need the migration to be hands-on or hands-off.
Shopify Store Importer
What it means: Shopify’s free, built-in migration tool.
Why it matters: It works for straightforward catalogs under 500 products. It does not handle configurable product restructuring well, and order history import is limited.
What to do: Use it only for simple stores. If you have complex products, custom attributes, or large catalogs, choose a more capable tool.
Matrixify
What it means: A spreadsheet-driven Shopify app that gives technical users complete control over data import and export.
Why it matters: Best for teams comfortable with spreadsheets who want to customize every aspect of the migration. But as practitioners note, Magento to Shopify data migration with Matrixify requires significant manual work, especially for stores with hundreds of thousands of products.
What to do: Use Matrixify when you have a technical team and need fine-grained control. Budget extra time for the manual mapping work.
LitExtension
What it means: An automated migration service supporting 140+ source platforms.
Why it matters: Strongest choice for multilingual stores, stores with complex custom data, or merchants who want a dedicated migration expert handling the process.
What to do: Consider LitExtension if your store runs multiple languages or has data structures that don’t fit neatly into standard CSV templates.
Cart2Cart
What it means: An API-based migration tool that runs on its own servers.
Why it matters: Your Magento store stays live throughout the migration. Zero downtime during the data transfer phase.
What to do: Good for stores where any downtime is unacceptable. Run a test migration first to verify data accuracy.
Dry Run / Test Migration
What it means: Importing your data into a Shopify development store before the real cutover.
Why it matters: A dry run reveals mapping errors, missing data, broken images, and variant issues before they affect your live store. Every migration tool supports this. There is no reason to skip it.
What to do: Create a Shopify development store. Run the full import. Have your team review products, check variant accuracy, verify customer data, and confirm order history imports correctly. Fix every issue found before the real migration.
SEO Preservation Terms
This is where migrations succeed or fail in the long term. A practitioner at Charle Agency stated bluntly: “The risk in a Magento to Shopify transition is not the data transfer. Migration apps all move data about equally well. What separates a clean launch from a six-month tail of post-launch issues comes down to redirects.”
301 Redirect
What it means: A permanent URL redirect that tells search engines (and browsers) that a page has moved to a new address. It passes most of the original page’s ranking signals to the new URL.
Why it matters: This is the single most critical task in your Magento to Shopify migration checklist. Every indexed URL that changes without a matching 301 redirect becomes a 404 error, which means lost rankings, lost traffic, and lost revenue.
What to do: Map every indexed Magento URL to its Shopify equivalent. Upload all redirects before switching DNS. Verify them with a crawl tool after launch.
Redirect Map
What it means: A spreadsheet pairing every indexed Magento URL with its corresponding Shopify URL.
Why it matters: One merchant in the Shopify Community forum reported a traffic drop of 49.75% after migration, even claiming all 301 redirects were in place. Community responses pointed to internal linking structure changes and theme-level SEO metadata loss as likely culprits beyond just redirect mapping. The redirect map is necessary but not sufficient.
What to do: Crawl your Magento site to capture every indexed URL. Include category pages, product pages, CMS pages, and blog posts. Match each to its Shopify destination. For pages with no equivalent, redirect to the closest relevant page (not the homepage).
URL Structure Mismatch
What it means: Shopify uses fixed URL prefixes: /products/, /collections/, /pages/. Magento uses category-based paths that can be deeply nested (e.g., /men/shoes/running/product-name.html).
Why it matters: Nearly every URL will change during migration. This makes comprehensive redirect mapping unavoidable.
What to do: Accept that URL structures will differ. Focus your energy on making sure every old URL has a redirect pointing to the correct new URL. Don’t try to force Shopify to mimic Magento’s URL structure.
Redirect Limit
What it means: Standard Shopify plans support up to 100,000 redirects. Shopify Plus allows up to 20 million.
Why it matters: Large Magento stores with years of content, product churn, and category changes can easily exceed 100,000 indexed URLs. If you’re on a standard plan and hit the cap, some old URLs won’t get redirects.
What to do: Count your indexed URLs before choosing a Shopify plan. If you’re over 100,000, you either need Shopify Plus or a strategy to prioritize redirects for the highest-traffic pages.
Screaming Frog Crawl
What it means: A pre-migration site crawl using Screaming Frog (or a similar tool) to capture every URL on your Magento site, along with metadata, status codes, and internal links.
Why it matters: This crawl becomes the source of truth for your redirect map. It also captures title tags, meta descriptions, H1s, and canonical tags that need to be ported.
What to do: Run the crawl before migration begins. Export the full URL list with metadata. Store it somewhere accessible to everyone on the migration team. You’ll also want clean analytics on your new store, so plan to set up GA4 event tracking properly from day one.
Google Search Console Resubmission
What it means: Submitting an updated XML sitemap to Google Search Console within 24 hours of your Shopify store going live.
Why it matters: Google needs to know your site structure has changed. The sooner it crawls the new sitemap, the sooner it starts indexing new URLs and following redirects.
What to do: Generate a Shopify sitemap (Shopify does this automatically). Submit it in Google Search Console immediately after launch. Monitor the Index Coverage report daily for the first two weeks.
Meta Data Migration
What it means: Porting title tags, meta descriptions, and structured data markup from Magento to Shopify.
Why it matters: This data often gets lost silently during migration. Your new Shopify theme might auto-generate meta titles from product names, overwriting the carefully optimized titles you had in Magento. Practitioners on the Shopify Community forum have identified theme-level SEO metadata loss as a major contributor to post-migration traffic drops.
What to do: Export all meta titles and descriptions from your Screaming Frog crawl. After importing products to Shopify, verify that custom meta data appears correctly. Don’t rely on auto-generated defaults.
Canonical Tag
What it means: An HTML tag that tells search engines which version of a page is the “preferred” one when duplicate or similar pages exist.
Why it matters: Misconfigured canonical tags after migration can tell Google to ignore your new pages in favor of old (now-redirected) URLs, or create duplicate content issues between collection pages and product pages.
What to do: After launch, crawl your Shopify store and verify canonical tags point to the correct URLs. Check both product pages and collection-filtered pages.
Theme and UX Terms
Your Magento theme doesn’t transfer. Everything gets rebuilt. This is actually an opportunity if you approach it right.
Liquid
What it means: Shopify’s templating language. Every Magento theme must be rebuilt in Liquid to work on Shopify.
Why it matters: There is no automated conversion from Magento’s PHP templates to Liquid. A custom Magento theme with heavy modifications means significant development time for the Shopify rebuild.
What to do: Decide early whether to purchase a Shopify theme and customize it or build a completely custom theme. Purchased themes with customization are faster and cheaper. Custom builds offer more control but cost more and take longer.
Shopify Sections and Blocks
What it means: Modular, drag-and-drop page-building components in Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 architecture. They replace Magento’s CMS blocks and widgets.
Why it matters: Sections and blocks give non-developers the ability to rearrange and customize pages without touching code. If you’re coming from Magento, where every page change required a developer, this is a significant operational improvement.
What to do: Choose a theme that supports robust section and block configurations. Train your marketing team on how to use the theme editor. Use the migration as a forcing function to design a CRO testing roadmap for your new store from day one.
Checkout Extensibility
What it means: Shopify Plus’s framework for customizing the checkout experience, replacing the older checkout.liquid approach.
Why it matters: If you had custom checkout logic in Magento (special fields, gift messages, B2B purchase orders), you need to rebuild it using Checkout Extensibility on Shopify Plus.
What to do: Document every checkout customization from your Magento store. Determine which are must-haves versus nice-to-haves. Build the must-haves using Checkout Extensibility before launch.
Shopify Functions
What it means: Serverless code that replaces Shopify Scripts for custom backend logic (discounts, payment method filtering, delivery customization).
Why it matters: Shopify Scripts retires June 30, 2026. Any custom logic previously built on Scripts must be rebuilt using Functions. If you’re migrating in 2026, build on Functions from the start, not Scripts.
What to do: Identify any custom discount logic, shipping rules, or payment method filtering from your Magento store. Rebuild these using Shopify Functions, not Scripts.
Integrations and Operations Terms
Your store doesn’t exist in isolation. Every tool connected to Magento needs a new connection to Shopify.
Integration Inventory
What it means: A complete list of every CRM, ERP, email marketing platform, shipping provider, loyalty program, analytics tool, and any other system connected to your Magento store.
Why it matters: Missing even one integration can break critical workflows. If your ERP doesn’t sync with Shopify, inventory counts diverge within hours.
What to do: Create a spreadsheet listing every integration, its purpose, how it connects (API, file sync, manual), and who owns it. Prioritize reconnection in order of business impact.
Brands running across multiple channels often find that migration is the right moment to unify their D2C growth services under one strategy rather than patching things together after the fact.
App Parity Gap
What it means: The gap between what your Magento extensions did and what Shopify’s app ecosystem offers.
Why it matters: About 90% of Magento extensions lack direct Shopify equivalents. You’ll need to find alternative apps, use native Shopify features, or build custom solutions. This is a major source of scope creep.
What to do: For each Magento extension, identify the specific functionality it provides (not just the extension name). Search the Shopify App Store for apps that provide that functionality. Accept that some features may need custom development.
Shopify API
What it means: Shopify’s programmatic interface for building custom integrations and functionality.
Why it matters: When neither native features nor apps cover a requirement, the API is your escape valve. Common custom builds include proprietary pricing logic, custom reporting, and niche fulfillment workflows.
What to do: Identify API requirements early and budget for custom development time. Don’t assume everything can be solved with off-the-shelf apps.
3PL Sync
What it means: Connecting your third-party logistics provider to Shopify’s fulfillment system.
Why it matters: If your 3PL doesn’t receive orders from Shopify, nothing ships. This connection needs to be tested before launch, not after.
What to do: Check whether your 3PL has a native Shopify integration or requires an API connection. Test the full order-to-shipment flow on your development store.
Payment Gateway Migration
What it means: Reconfiguring payment processors for Shopify. Saved customer payment methods (stored credit cards, subscriptions) do not transfer between platforms.
Why it matters: Subscription businesses are hit hardest here. Every customer with a saved payment method needs to re-enter their card details. This can cause significant churn if not communicated proactively.
What to do: Notify subscription customers in advance. Coordinate with your payment processor on migration timing. If you use Shopify Payments, set it up and test it during the dry run. After your store goes live, consider reconnecting Meta ad tracking via CAPI to avoid losing attribution data during the transition.
Launch and Post-Launch Terms
This is the point of no return. Everything before this was preparation. Everything after is execution and monitoring.
DNS Cutover
What it means: Pointing your domain’s DNS records from the Magento server to Shopify. Once propagation completes, visitors to your domain see the Shopify store.
Why it matters: DNS propagation can take 24 to 48 hours. During that window, some visitors see the old site and some see the new one. This is when delta migration becomes critical.
What to do: Schedule DNS cutover during a low-traffic period. Have both stores running simultaneously during propagation. Monitor closely for errors.
Go-Live Sequence
What it means: The ordered steps for launching your Shopify store.
Why it matters: Doing these steps out of order causes problems. For example, switching DNS before uploading redirects means every old URL 404s until redirects are added.
What to do: Follow this sequence: (1) Upload all 301 redirects to Shopify. (2) Disable the Magento storefront. (3) Switch DNS records to Shopify. (4) Remove Shopify’s password protection. (5) Submit the updated sitemap to Google Search Console. (6) Send customer password reset emails.
QA Checklist
What it means: A systematic test of every critical store function before and immediately after going live.
Why it matters: Post-migration bugs are common. Items dropping from cart, discount codes not applying, shipping rates miscalculating, email confirmations not sending. Each one costs sales and erodes customer trust. This is a common post-migration issue, and understanding how to fix Shopify checkout dropping items from cart can save you significant headaches.
What to do: Test the following on both desktop and mobile: guest checkout, logged-in checkout, discount code application, shipping rate calculation for multiple destinations, tax calculation, email order confirmation, and payment processing. Test with real payment methods, not just test mode.
Post-Launch Monitoring
What it means: A 48 to 72-hour intensive watch period after launch, tracking 404 errors, conversion rate changes, and customer support ticket volume.
Why it matters: Problems surface quickly after launch. A spike in 404s means redirect gaps. A conversion drop means checkout issues. A support ticket surge means customer-facing problems.
What to do: Assign someone to monitor Google Search Console (for crawl errors), Google Analytics (for conversion rate), and your support inbox (for customer complaints) around the clock for at least 72 hours.
WISMO Spike
What it means: “Where Is My Order?” support tickets that surge when order numbers change format during migration.
Why it matters: Customers who placed orders on Magento try to track them on Shopify but can’t find them. The account portal looks different. Order numbers don’t match. As practitioners have noted, customers think their order history is gone. They call. In volume.
What to do: Proactively email customers with pending orders explaining the transition. Provide direct links to order status. Keep Magento’s order lookup page accessible (even if read-only) for a transition period.
Bulk Account Inviter
What it means: A Shopify app that mass-sends password reset emails to migrated customer accounts.
Why it matters: Since customer passwords can’t be migrated, this app is how you get customers to set up new credentials. Without it, every customer hits a login wall on their first visit to your new store.
What to do: Install and configure the Bulk Account Inviter before launch. Draft a clear, branded email explaining why customers need to reset their password. Send it as part of your go-live sequence.
Traffic Recovery Window
What it means: The period after migration when organic traffic stabilizes at its new baseline. For small sites, this takes weeks. For large sites, it can take months.
Why it matters: Even with perfect redirects, some traffic fluctuation is normal. Google needs time to recrawl, reindex, and reassess your new site. The question is whether the dip is temporary (expected) or structural (something went wrong).
What to do: Set realistic expectations with stakeholders. Monitor weekly organic traffic, not daily, to smooth out noise. If traffic hasn’t started recovering after four weeks, audit your redirects, canonical tags, and indexation status. Plan to migrate at least six months before your busy season, or immediately after it, to give yourself runway.
Magento End-of-Life Context
Understanding why you’re migrating matters as much as how.
Magento 1 EOL
Magento 1 has been end-of-life since June 2020. Stores still running on it are operating on unpatched, unsupported software with known security vulnerabilities.
Magento 2.4.4 EOL
Extended support for Magento 2.4.4 ended April 2026. Stores on this version are already running unpatched software. Security patches for Magento 2 cost $2,000 to $5,000 each, with basic developer retainers running $500 to $1,500 per month.
Total Cost of Ownership
Post-migration, brands typically see a 2 to 4x reduction in three-year TCO and release velocity measured in weeks rather than quarters. Bombas, for example, saved $108,000 in platform costs in their first year after replatforming from Magento to Shopify Plus, going on to achieve $17.2 million in sales. Merchants also typically see a 10 to 20% checkout conversion lift after migration, which you can build on by improving your Shopify checkout conversion rate through targeted optimizations.
Putting the Checklist Together
Here’s your Magento to Shopify migration checklist condensed into a sequenced action list:
Phase 1: Audit (Weeks 1-2)
- Complete Magento audit (products, customers, orders, extensions, custom code)
- Full data backup to external storage
- EAV attribute inventory and metafield mapping plan
- Extension audit with parity analysis
- Budget and timeline scoped
Phase 2: Data Migration (Weeks 3-5)
- CSV export and column mapping
- Metafield definitions created in Shopify
- Products imported (with variants, images, pricing)
- Customers imported
- Historical orders imported
- Dry run completed and verified
Phase 3: SEO Preservation (Weeks 3-5, parallel)
- Screaming Frog crawl of Magento site
- Complete redirect map built
- Meta data exported and verified
- All redirects uploaded to Shopify
Phase 4: Theme and Integrations (Weeks 3-6, parallel)
- Shopify theme selected or custom build started
- Checkout customizations rebuilt via Checkout Extensibility / Functions
- All integrations reconnected (CRM, ERP, email, 3PL, analytics)
- Payment gateway configured and tested
Phase 5: Launch (Week 6-7)
- QA checklist completed (desktop and mobile)
- Go-live sequence executed in order
- DNS cutover during low-traffic window
- Customer password reset emails sent
- Sitemap submitted to Google Search Console
Phase 6: Post-Launch (Weeks 7-10)
- 72-hour monitoring of 404s, conversion rate, support tickets
- Delta migration to close the order gap
- WISMO mitigation communications sent
- Weekly organic traffic monitoring
- First CRO experiments planned
FAQ
How long does a Magento to Shopify migration take?
Simple stores with under 1,000 products and standard functionality typically take four to eight weeks. Complex or enterprise setups with heavy customization, multiple integrations, and large catalogs can take three to six months.
Can I migrate customer passwords from Magento to Shopify?
No. Customer passwords are one-way hashed and cannot be decrypted or transferred. Every customer must reset their password on the new Shopify store. Plan a Bulk Account Inviter email as part of your launch sequence.
How much does a Magento to Shopify migration cost?
Magento Open Source to Shopify migrations typically cost $5,000 to $40,000. Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus migrations range from $25,000 to $250,000+, depending on the complexity of integrations, custom functionality, and catalog size.
Will I lose SEO rankings during migration?
Some temporary fluctuation is normal. However, incomplete redirect mapping causes organic traffic drops of 20 to 40% that don’t recover quickly. A comprehensive 301 redirect map, proper meta data migration, and canonical tag verification are your best protection.
What’s the best tool for Magento to Shopify data migration?
It depends on your needs. Shopify Store Importer works for simple stores under 500 products. Matrixify gives technical teams full control. LitExtension handles multilingual and complex data well. Cart2Cart keeps your Magento store live during migration. Run a dry run with any tool before committing.
Has Shopify’s variant limit changed?
Yes. Shopify raised the per-product variant cap to 2,048 in October 2025. The old 100-variant limit is gone. However, the three-option-type limit per product still applies, which means you can have size, color, and one additional option but not four.
What happens to my Magento extensions after migration?
About 90% of Magento extensions lack direct Shopify equivalents. Each one needs to be mapped to a native Shopify feature, a Shopify App Store alternative, or rebuilt as custom functionality. This audit is one of the most important pre-migration steps.
When should I schedule the migration relative to my busy season?
Migrate at least six months before your peak sales period or immediately after it ends. This gives you enough runway for traffic to stabilize and for your team to resolve post-launch issues without the pressure of high-volume sales days.
If you’re planning a Magento to Shopify migration and want a clear picture of what your new store needs to succeed, talk to our Shopify team or start with a free ecommerce brand audit to get a migration readiness scorecard before you begin.