User-friendly platforms always win, and this is one of the reasons that business owners have started to migrate to Shopify Plus. Magento is more complex and requires technical knowledge, resources, and assistance to get started with the platform. On the other hand, Shopify Plus is user-friendly with drag and drop features that minimize the technical assistance while also helping in getting the work done seamlessly. In this blog, we will be focusing on Magento to Shopify Plus migration, planning, tools and resources for a smooth migration, and common challenges you might face. So. Without any further ado, let’s get into this.
Why Migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus?
There are multiple “convincing’ reasons that have pushed the button for business owners to migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus. Let’s study them.
Simplified Store Management
Shopify Plus offers a user-friendly experience to set up, run, and maintain your eCommerce store. Whereas Magento requires technical knowledge and experience to do all the procedures, even the basic ones, for your store.
Owners and consumers’ behaviors have changed as business owners want quick and easy solutions that are also cost-effective. And this all comes with Shopify Plus!
Cost-Effectiveness and Predictable Pricing
Hidden and additional charges work as repellent and Magento does that. It has extra and additional costs for hosting, security updates, and ongoing maintenance that might affect a business budget. But with Shopify subscription models’, there is no hassle like that as it eliminates unexpected expenses and makes financial planning easier.
Performance and Security Enhancements
Shopify Plus offers automatic updates, built-in PCI compliance, and a cloud-based infrastructure with global CDN support. Magento users, however, must manage security patches, hosting performance, and speed optimization manually which also leads to additional costs (as mentioned above).
Scalability for Growing Businesses
High-volume traffic with unlimited bandwidth? Shopify has got you! Shopify Plus offers unlimited bandwidth and it’s a MAJOR MAJOR advantage for the growing eCommerce stores. With automated scalability, your growth will never get compromised. On the other hand, Magento is flexible, but it has certain limitations and requires configurations.
Built-in Features and Automation
Shopify Plus comes with powerful tools like Shopify Flow (for workflow automation), Shopify Scripts (for dynamic pricing rules), and seamless integrations with marketplaces and social media. Magento often requires custom development or third-party extensions for similar functionality.
Faster Go-To-Market Strategy
Magento development takes a good amount of time but with Shopify Plus businesses can launch and scale quickly thanks to its fully hosted environment and intuitive admin panel. Magento has relatively complex panel, setup, development-heavy customizations that can slow down expansion efforts.
Dedicated Support and Reliability
Shopify Plus provides priority customer support with a dedicated account manager. Magento users typically rely on community forums or external developers for troubleshooting, which can delay issue resolution.
Pre-Migration Planning
Below is the complete table that can help you navigate the migration process seamlessly.
| Key Aspect | Description |
|---|---|
| Business Objectives | Define clear migration goals, such as improving scalability, reducing maintenance costs, or enhancing user experience. |
| Data Audit & Cleanup | Review existing Magento data, remove outdated records, and ensure all product, customer, and order data is structured properly for migration. |
| SEO & URL Mapping | Identify high-ranking pages, plan 301 redirects, and ensure metadata, URLs, and alt text are maintained to prevent SEO losses. |
| Feature & Customization Analysis | Compare Magento custom features with Shopify Plus alternatives, ensuring key functionalities can be replicated through apps or custom development. |
| Third-Party Integrations | List all essential integrations (e.g., payment gateways, CRM, ERP) and find Shopify-compatible alternatives or custom API solutions. |
| Design & Theme Selection | Decide whether to use a pre-built Shopify Plus theme or create a custom one, ensuring it aligns with your brand identity and user experience. |
| Testing & Staging | Set up a staging environment to test data migration, integrations, and design before going live to avoid operational disruptions. |
| Migration Strategy | Choose between automated migration tools, manual transfers, or hybrid approaches based on data complexity and business needs. |
| Backup & Contingency Plan | Take a full backup of Magento data and site files to prevent data loss, ensuring rollback options in case of migration issues. |
| Training & Post-Migration Support | Prepare your team for Shopify Plus operations, conduct training sessions, and establish post-launch monitoring for troubleshooting. |
Step-by-Step Magento Shopify Plus Migration Process
The process of Shopify Plus migration involves a few steps. Let’s take a look at the images so that you can understand the whole process easily.
Back Up Your Magento Store
Before you start the migration process, make sure that you have backed up your entire Magento store so that if anything goes wrong during the process you have all the data stored.
To back up your Magento store, Log into your Magento admin dashboard and select System > Tools > Backups.
Source: Mageplaza
After that, you will find three options i.e., data backup, system and media backup, and database backup.
Source: Mageplaza
Below is a brief description about these three options:
System backup
It will back up your entire system that includes your source code and the database.
System and media backup
If you choose this option, it will sync your database and media folder’s content only. It will not sync your themes.
Database backup
If you choose this option, it will only take the backup of your database and nothing else.
Source: Mageplaza
After that choose a name for your backup so that you can easily access it.
You can tick the box for excluding media folder from the backup. In addition to that, the maintenance mode will automatically disable as soon as the backup gets completed.
Pro tip: Inform your customers about the maintenance time period so that they know about it, and you deliver a customer-first experience by informing them.
Shopify Store Set-Up
Once the backup is completed, the next step is to set up your Shopify Plus store. To set up your Shopify Plus store, make sure you have finalized the pricing plan you would like to go with. There are certain questions that come in way before you make a final decision. For this you must know the features, support from CR, and other factors you want to avail yourself for your store and business so that it grows seamlessly. It also depends on a number of factors such as customer base, average order value (AOV) and number of sales, local or international business, number and types of transactions.
Setting up your Magento store involves various steps. Let’s go through those first:
Once you have set up your Shopify Plus store, it’s time to export data from Magento. Here is how you can do it mentioned in the next step.
Add a Product to Your Shopify Plus Store
Once you have created a Shopify store, it will take you to the product page. Go to the admin dashboard and go to Products > Add your products and enter the required information, such as product title, description, pricing, and more for product listing and SEO purposes.
Source: Mageplaza
Once you have created the page, you can create more as per the requirement. In addition to that, you can also create page collections.
Create your store page
There are certain pages that come first and foremost in priority as these are the key pages. These pages include privacy policy, cookies and data policy, FAQs, contact us page, blogs, and other pages. You can create a store page by following this path: Online Store > Pages > Add page.
Choose theme
Visit Shopify Store Theme to find the perfect visualization that matches your business and niche. It is up to you whether you want to go for free themes or buy premium themes. There is a wide range of themes according to the requirements of the business owners.
Add payment method
This is an important step of migration from Magento to Shopify Plus. As it has its own payment gateway known as Shopify Payments. By enabling it, there will be no transaction fee that is imposed by Shopify on each purchase, however, credit card processing fees will still apply.
Source: Mageplaza
Export Data from Magento
Now that your Shopify store is set up, it’s time to export your data from Magento. You can do this by exporting it as a CSV file.
To export your data, go to your Magento admin panel and navigate to System > Data Transfer > Export. In the Export menu, select Product as the Entity Type and CSV as the Export File Format.
Select the product attributes you want to exclude from the export process by checking the appropriate boxes. You’ll see a message stating, “Make sure your cron is running to export the file.”
If you’re unfamiliar with cron, you’re not alone. Magento’s cron job feature automates tasks by running scheduled commands.
To configure cron in Magento 2, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Advanced > System > Cron (Scheduled Tasks).
Finally, click the “Export” button to start the process. Once completed, you can download the exported file to your computer.
Import Data from Magento to Shopify
If you have a CSV file exported from Magento, you can use it to import your data into your Shopify store. Here are a few key points to keep in mind:
- Ensure your CSV file is formatted according to Shopify’s requirements.
- The file size must not exceed 15 MB.
- Images cannot be exported via CSV—you’ll need to upload image URLs instead.
To get image URLs:
- Go to Shopify Admin > Settings > Files
- Upload your images
- Copy the URLs from the Link column
Once ready, go to Shopify Admin > Products and click Import in the top-right corner.
Click Add file and select the CVS file you want to import from.
Tell Your Customers About Platform Change
It is always better to inform your customers whether it is platform change, an URL redirect, or service maintenance as it might affect their experience, especially your returning customers.
You can communicate with your customers through email. Not only that but in case ther4 are other processes, also inform them about page redirects and any unavailable services during the migration.
Test Your Shopify Store
Before you launch your store, make sure that you have thoroughly tested your Shopify Plus store for menu navigation, checkout experience, product selection process, and templates. The migration must be tested properly so you can identify potential issues before executing the full migration.
It will help you in finding and addressing major/minor glitches that may have arisen during the Magento to Shopify migration process.
Launch Your Store
Once all the steps are done and your Shopify store has passed the quality assurance phase, launch your store. However, the pro tip here is to plan your launch window at such a time when the traffic is relatively less so that customers face minimal downtime.
Or you can also inform your customers beforehand about the migration of the store to another platform.
Tools and Resources for a Smooth Migration
In order to execute the migration process smoothly, there are some handy tools that can help you complete it. Below are the tools for a smooth migration to Shopify Plus:
- Shopify Plus Migration Guide – A step-by-step resource straight from Shopify to keep things on track.
- Shopify Transporter App – Helps move bulk data like products, customers, and orders without a hassle.
- Rewind Backups – A safety net to back up your store before making any big moves.
- Matrixify (Excelify) – Perfect for handling complex data imports and exports.
- SEO Redirect Manager – Keeps your search rankings intact by redirecting old URLs properly.
- Klaviyo & Omnisend – Ensures your email marketing flows stay intact post-migration.
- Google Tag Manager & Analytics – Makes sure all your tracking is set up correctly after the switch.
- Third-Party API Integrations – Connects your ERP, CRM, and other essential systems without hiccups.
- Shopify Experts & Partners – If you want a stress-free migration, these pros can handle it. Book a meeting with us to find the best match for hiring Shopify expert.
Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them
1. Data Loss or Corruption
Migrating customer data, orders, and product information can sometimes lead to missing or corrupted data. To avoid this, perform multiple test migrations, validate data integrity at each stage, and use automated migration tools with backup mechanisms.
2. URL Structure and SEO Disruptions
A change in platform often results in broken URLs and lost SEO rankings. Implement 301 redirects for old URLs, maintain metadata, and ensure proper indexing on Shopify Plus to minimize SEO impact.
3. Customization and Feature Gaps
Magento allows deep customizations, while Shopify Plus operates within a structured ecosystem. Identify essential custom features and determine if Shopify apps, APIs, or scripts can replicate them without affecting performance.
4. Downtime and Operational Disruptions
A poorly planned migration can lead to downtime, affecting sales and customer experience. Schedule the migration during off-peak hours, run parallel environments for testing, and ensure a rollback plan in case of failures.
5. Third-Party Integrations Compatibility
Some Magento extensions may not have direct Shopify Plus alternatives. Audit your integrations, find equivalent apps in the Shopify ecosystem, and leverage API-based solutions to maintain workflows without disruption.
Conclusion
Migration from Magento to Shopify Plus offers scalability, ease of use, and a more streamlined experience for growing businesses. With the right strategy, you can retain your store’s functionality, maintain SEO rankings, and enhance performance. Partnering with experts ensures a smooth transition, minimizing downtime and maximizing the benefits of Shopify Plus.
Magento to Shopify Migration Service
Get better features, automation, and scalability for your eCommerce store with Bizmia. We provide robust Magento to Shopify migration services that minimize downtime and uplift your store seamlessly. Not only that but also get post-launch support to make sure you don’t face any challenges, and your store stays updated with the latest launches.
Book a meeting today with us and get started!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How long does it take to migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus?
The migration timeline depends on the complexity of your store, including data volume, custom features, and integrations. On average, a standard migration takes 2 to 8 weeks, but larger stores with custom functionalities may take longer. Proper planning and testing ensure a smooth transition with minimal disruptions.
2. What is the cost of migrating to Shopify Plus?
Migration costs vary based on store size, complexity, and required customizations. A basic migration may start at $5,000–$10,000, while advanced projects with custom features can exceed $20,000. Costs include data transfer, design adjustments, and third-party app integrations. Hiring an experienced migration partner can help optimize costs and avoid pitfalls.
3. Can I migrate my custom Magento features to Shopify Plus?
Yes, many custom Magento features can be rebuilt or replicated on Shopify Plus using custom development, third-party apps, or Shopify’s API. However, some functionalities may require adjustments due to platform differences. A migration expert can help assess what can be transferred directly and suggest alternatives for features that need reworking.
4. How do I ensure my SEO rankings are not affected?
To maintain SEO rankings, implement 301 redirects for all URLs, ensure proper metadata migration, and preserve your site’s structure where possible. Shopify Plus also supports customizable URL structures, schema markup, and SEO-friendly practices. Post-migration, closely monitor traffic, rankings, and indexation in Google Search Console to make necessary adjustments.
