How Much Does a Shopify Migration Cost? A Transparent Pricing Guide

Key Takeaways

• There is no single Shopify migration price, because there is no single type of migration. A 50 product store and a 5,000 product store with years of order history are not the same project.
• As a broad guide, a simple template migration runs £3,000 to £7,500, a custom theme migration £7,500 to £20,000 or more, and a complex or enterprise migration £20,000 to £50,000 and beyond.
• The platform you are leaving matters more than the platform you are joining. Magento migrations typically cost three to five times a comparable Squarespace move.
• Two things push a quote out of the template tier more often than anything else: bespoke functionality that has to be rebuilt rather than replaced by an app, and complex international shipping rules across a large catalogue.
• Cost in isolation is the wrong measure. Compare the migration against three years of staying where you are, including hosting, maintenance, developer time, plugins and the features you cannot ship.
• The quote is not the total. Budget for the Shopify subscription, replacement apps, content, staff training and post-launch SEO monitoring.
• Compare scope, not price. A cheaper quote that omits redirect mapping and SEO preservation is not cheaper if it costs you organic revenue.
• Ask how an agency handles redirects before you ask what they charge. It is the single question that separates a migration from a data transfer.

Quick Answer

A Shopify migration typically costs £3,000 to £7,500 for a straightforward data and template migration, £7,500 to £20,000 or more for a custom theme build, and £20,000 to £50,000 or more for complex or enterprise projects. A DIY move using CSV imports or a migration app can cost very little in software, though it consumes significant internal time. The main cost drivers are the platform you are migrating from, catalogue size, volume of customer and order history, integrations, how much SEO protection the site needs, and whether you are redesigning at the same time. Timelines run roughly 2 to 5 weeks for a simple migration, 5 to 10 weeks for a custom build, and 10 to 20 weeks or more for enterprise projects.

Table of Contents

• Why Cost Is the Wrong First Question
• What Determines the Cost
• DIY Migration Costs
• Agency Migration Costs
• What You Are Paying an Agency For
• Platform-Specific Migration Costs
• The Costs Most Merchants Forget
• Is the Migration Worth the Investment?
• Choosing a Shopify Migration Agency
• Why Matters Perspective
• Frequently Asked Questions

A Shopify migration can cost anywhere from a few hundred pounds for a simple DIY move to tens of thousands for a complex enterprise replatform. The final figure depends on your existing platform, catalogue size, data, integrations, SEO requirements, design and development work.

This guide breaks down what sits behind those numbers so you can work out which category your own migration falls into. For the full project view see our complete Shopify migration checklist, and for the SEO side see how to migrate to Shopify without losing your rankings.

Why Cost Is the Wrong First Question

Cost is usually the first question a merchant asks, and that is entirely reasonable. If you are responsible for a business you need to know what an investment will cost before committing to it. The problem is that looking at the migration cost in isolation gives you the wrong answer. The better question is what it costs to stay where you are.

If your current platform works perfectly, needs little maintenance and gives the business everything it needs, there may be little reason to migrate. But if you are spending thousands every year maintaining an increasingly complicated website, paying developers to fix problems, buying plugins for basic functionality or losing sales because the site is slow, the calculation changes. A £10,000 migration looks expensive on its own. It looks very different against £6,000 a year maintaining a platform that is already holding the business back.

The Hidden Cost of Staying Put

The cost of an ecommerce platform is not the monthly hosting bill. For established stores it is spread across hosting, security, backups, premium plugins, extensions, development time, maintenance contracts, performance work and fixes whenever an update breaks something. WooCommerce is extremely flexible, but that flexibility means managing a larger collection of third-party components. Magento offers enormous capability for larger businesses at considerably greater development and maintenance cost than a managed platform.

Then there is the cost that never appears on an invoice. If your website makes it difficult to introduce a subscription model, improve checkout, launch an international market or change your product pages, the real cost is not the developer's fee. It is the revenue you did not generate because those changes were too hard to ship.

What Determines the Cost

The most useful way to understand Shopify migration pricing is to look at the individual components of the project. Shopify itself recognises that migration methods vary with the amount and complexity of the data being moved, and its guidance covers everything from manual CSV imports through migration apps and Shopify Partners to custom API-based solutions. You can see the approaches in Shopify's official migration guide.

This is why asking an agency for a migration cost before discussing the existing store produces a fairly meaningless number. A credible quote is based on what actually needs to be moved, rebuilt and protected.

DIY Migration Costs

For smaller businesses, migrating yourself can be a perfectly reasonable option. Shopify provides CSV imports and supports migration apps, and its own documentation notes that smaller businesses may be able to migrate products and customers manually while more complex moves use apps, APIs or Shopify Partners.

The direct financial cost can therefore be low. Tools such as LitExtension and Cart2Cart provide automated migration, priced by platform and data volume.

The biggest cost of a DIY migration is not the software, it is your time. You need to learn how Shopify works, understand how your data maps across, configure the store, check the imports, recreate functionality, test checkout, handle the unexpected and manage the launch. For a small store that is manageable. For a business generating substantial revenue online, the calculation is very different, because the time comes out of running the business and the risk sits entirely with you.

Agency Migration Costs

For an established business, hiring an agency is less about paying someone to import products and more about reducing risk and management burden. A good migration agency takes responsibility for the parts that can materially affect trading: data migration, theme implementation, integrations, SEO preservation, testing and launch.

Template Migration with Data Transfer

The most straightforward type of professional migration. You already have a design or are happy with an existing Shopify theme, and the objective is moving onto Shopify while preserving the functionality of the current site. A typical project covers store setup, theme configuration, product and customer migration, order history where supported, collections, pages and blog content, basic app configuration, URL redirects, analytics setup, testing and launch support.

Expect somewhere in the region of £3,000 to £7,500. The range is deliberately broad, because a 100 product WooCommerce store and a 1,500 product one are not equivalent projects even though both sit in this category.

Custom Theme Migration

This goes considerably further. Rather than recreating the existing site on a stock theme, the agency designs and builds a storefront around your brand, customer journey and commercial objectives. That adds UX strategy, wireframing, custom visual and responsive design, bespoke theme development, custom sections, product and collection page development, conversion optimisation, custom functionality, advanced integrations and more extensive testing.

For an established business this typically falls around £7,500 to £20,000 or more. The more custom functionality and design involved, the further the project moves from a migration towards a full ecommerce rebuild, and the pricing follows.

In our experience, two things push a quote out of the template tier and into this one more often than anything else. The first is bespoke functionality that has to be rebuilt rather than replaced with an app. The second is complex international shipping rules applied across a large catalogue, where rates vary by destination, weight and product in combinations that cannot be expressed through standard Shopify shipping profiles. Neither is obvious from a brief, which is a large part of why two quotes for what sounds like the same project can differ so widely.

Enterprise or Complex Platform Migration

At the higher end sit migrations from Magento, heavily customised WooCommerce installations or bespoke systems. These involve significantly more discovery before development begins: mapping complex product structures, customer data, order history, custom functionality, integrations, multiple storefronts and thousands of URLs, then rebuilding functionality that was written specifically for the old platform.

£20,000 to £50,000 or more is not unusual here, and larger enterprise projects go considerably beyond. The cost is not driven by Shopify. It is driven by the complexity of the business being moved.

Treat these as indicative project ranges rather than industry-standard prices. No governing body sets Shopify migration pricing, and agencies take different approaches to discovery, design, development and support. What matters is understanding what you are actually receiving for the money.

What You Are Paying an Agency For

An agency is not simply doing work you could do yourself. You are paying for experience and risk reduction: project management, SEO preservation, custom development, integration configuration, comprehensive testing and post-launch monitoring. A store has not been successfully migrated if customers can place orders but those orders never reach the systems that fulfil them.

How to Compare Quotes

Do not put three numbers side by side and take the cheapest. Compare the scope behind them.

The £5,000 quote looks like the obvious choice. But if the £9,500 project includes work that protects your existing organic traffic and reduces future development requirements, it may represent better value, because price per project is not the same thing as value per project. Our Shopify packages explain how we structure this work, and you can read more about our Shopify developers.

Platform-Specific Migration Costs

The platform you are leaving has a major impact on the final cost. There is no universal cost to move to Shopify, because moving away from WooCommerce is a very different job from moving away from Magento.

WooCommerce to Shopify

Often one of the more straightforward migrations, thanks to WordPress's relatively accessible data structure. Custom plugins, bespoke product fields, subscriptions and third-party integrations all increase the work. For a relatively straightforward store, expect £3,000 to £10,000. See our WooCommerce to Shopify migration guide for the process and WooCommerce vs Shopify for the platform comparison.

Magento to Shopify

Usually more complex, because of sophisticated product structures, multiple stores, custom pricing, custom checkout and extensive integrations. Expect £10,000 to £50,000 or more, with larger enterprise projects going considerably beyond. See our Magento to Shopify migration guide and Magento vs Shopify.

Squarespace to Shopify

Typically less technically complex, so a migration might fall around £2,500 to £8,000 depending on the design and functionality required. See Squarespace vs Shopify for when each platform makes sense.

BigCommerce to Shopify

A typical project falls around £4,000 to £12,000, though larger or more customised stores cost considerably more. See BigCommerce vs Shopify for the wider differences.

These ranges show relative complexity rather than fixed quotations. A small Magento store may cost less to migrate than a heavily customised WooCommerce enterprise store. The source platform is an important variable, not the only one.

The Costs Most Merchants Forget

The migration project is only part of the total. You also need to budget for the Shopify subscription (check Shopify's current UK pricing for plan costs), transaction fees if you are not using Shopify Payments, app subscriptions replacing functionality from your old platform such as reviews, subscriptions, loyalty, search and email marketing, content and photography if you are redesigning at the same time, staff training on the new platform, and post-migration SEO monitoring.

That last one gets cut from budgets most often and belongs in them most clearly. For a store with substantial organic revenue, monitoring after launch is part of the migration, not an optional extra. The realistic year-one calculation is the migration project plus subscription plus apps plus content and design plus training plus post-launch support, rather than the migration project on its own.

Is the Migration Worth the Investment?

Once you know what the migration costs, the question is whether it is financially justified, and that is a three-year question rather than a three-month one.

Start with what your current platform costs: hosting, maintenance, developer time, security, plugins and extensions, premium themes, performance work, third-party services and technical support. Then estimate the Shopify equivalent over the same period. Finally, consider the commercial upside: higher conversion rate, better mobile experience, faster implementation of new features, lower development costs, better subscription functionality, improved checkout, easier international expansion and reduced maintenance. You do not need to assume every benefit lands. Build the case on conservative assumptions.

A Simple Break-Even Example

Imagine a merchant currently spends £3,600 a year on hosting, £4,800 on development and maintenance, and £2,400 on plugins and extensions. That is £10,800 a year before staff time, or £32,400 over three years.

Now suppose they invest £12,000 in a migration, and their new platform and app costs total £5,000 a year. Over three years that is £12,000 plus £15,000, or £27,000. The migration has reduced three-year platform costs by £5,400 before any improvement in conversion rate or revenue.

The annual saving is £5,800, so the £12,000 investment pays for itself in a little over two years on platform costs alone. Any conversion rate improvement pulls that forward. This is only an example and your numbers will differ, but it reframes the question usefully. Not "is £12,000 expensive", but "what will £12,000 cost me compared with keeping my existing platform for another three years".

For some businesses the answer will still be that migration is not the right investment yet. For others the case is compelling. Either way, decide on total cost of ownership and expected commercial return rather than the quote alone.

Choosing a Shopify Migration Agency

If you decide an agency is the right route, do not choose on price alone. Look for one that understands the platform you are leaving, has genuine Shopify experience and can show it understands the risks.

Ask how they handle redirects, how they protect organic traffic, how customer and order data will be transferred, which integrations they have migrated before, what happens if something goes wrong after launch, and exactly what the quote includes. The redirect question is the most revealing of those, because an agency that treats redirect mapping as an afterthought is quoting for a data transfer rather than a migration. Our guide on how to choose the best Shopify development company covers the selection process in more detail.

Why Matters Perspective

We do not make migration projects artificially complicated to increase the proposal value. Equally, we do not strip important work out to produce the cheapest quote. If an existing Shopify theme is suitable, we will say so. If Shopify already provides functionality you do not need rebuilt, we will say so. If your SEO needs additional work to protect rankings, we will say that too.

The pattern we see most often is merchants comparing quotes that look similar and are not. Two proposals at £5,000 and £9,500 can describe completely different projects, and the difference is usually the invisible work: redirect mapping, integration testing, and the fortnight after launch when problems actually surface. That work does not demo well, which is exactly why it gets cut from cheaper quotes.

Every migration is scoped individually because no two stores are identical, and we provide detailed proposals so merchants understand what we are recommending and why. We also offer a 3-month guarantee on development projects, because an agency should remain accountable after launch. Learn more about our Shopify packages or email us to talk a project through.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to migrate to Shopify?

A straightforward data and template migration typically costs £3,000 to £7,500. A custom theme migration runs £7,500 to £20,000 or more. Complex and enterprise migrations start around £20,000 and can exceed £50,000. A DIY move using CSV imports or a migration app costs far less in software but requires significant internal time.

How long does a Shopify migration take?

A simple migration takes 2 to 5 weeks, a custom theme migration 5 to 10 weeks, and a complex enterprise migration 10 to 20 weeks or more. The timeline depends on catalogue size, integrations, how much design work is involved and how quickly decisions and content are supplied.

Why do Shopify migration quotes vary so much?

Because migration means different things depending on the store. A quote reflects the platform you are leaving, catalogue size, volume of customer and order history, number of integrations, how much SEO protection is required and whether a redesign is included. In our experience the two factors that most often move a quote from the template tier into the custom tier are bespoke functionality that cannot be replaced by an app, and complex international shipping rules across a large catalogue. Two quotes with very different numbers are often describing very different scopes.

Is it cheaper to migrate to Shopify myself?

In direct software cost, yes. Shopify supports CSV imports and migration apps charge relatively little. The cost moves to your time and your risk, since you handle data mapping, functionality, testing, redirects and launch. For a small store that can be sensible. For a store with meaningful organic traffic or revenue, a mistake costs more than the saving.

Does the platform I am migrating from change the price?

Significantly. Squarespace and straightforward WooCommerce stores tend to sit at the lower end, BigCommerce in the middle, and Magento at the top, because Magento stores usually carry complex product structures, custom functionality and integrations that need rebuilding rather than moving.

What costs do merchants usually forget to budget for?

The Shopify subscription, transaction fees if not using Shopify Payments, replacement app subscriptions, content and photography if redesigning, staff training, and post-launch SEO monitoring. Monitoring is the one most often omitted and the one most likely to matter if the store has substantial organic revenue.

Is a Shopify migration worth the investment?

It depends on what staying costs you. Compare three years of hosting, maintenance, developer time and plugins on your current platform against the migration plus three years of Shopify and apps. Where a platform is expensive to maintain or slow to change, migrations frequently pay for themselves within two to three years on cost alone, before any conversion improvement.

Final Thoughts

Shopify migration cost ranges from a modest DIY investment to a substantial enterprise project, and the number depends on the platform you are leaving, the data you need to move, the complexity of your existing store, the integrations involved, your SEO requirements and whether you are redesigning at the same time. There is no sensible universal price.

What you can establish is whether the proposed investment makes sense for your business, by comparing it against the cost of staying where you are over the next three years. Those costs are easy to overlook because they never arrive as one large invoice. They are spread across dozens of smaller ones and the things you did not get around to launching.

A well-planned migration protects the value you have already built while creating a stronger foundation for growth. That is ultimately what you are paying for. If you want a scoped, itemised quote rather than a headline number, email us.

Related Articles

• The Complete Shopify Migration Checklist: Before, During and After
• How to Migrate to Shopify Without Losing Your SEO Rankings
• How to Migrate from WooCommerce to Shopify: A Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Migrate from Magento to Shopify: A Step-by-Step Guide
• How Much Does It Cost to Build a Shopify Store? A Transparent Guide
• WooCommerce vs Shopify
• Magento vs Shopify
• Squarespace vs Shopify
• BigCommerce vs Shopify
• How to Choose the Best Shopify Development Company