How to Migrate from Magento to Shopify: A Step-by-Step Guide

Migrating from Magento to Shopify is rarely as simple as exporting your products, importing them into a new store and pointing your domain at Shopify.

For an established merchant the platform sits at the centre of a much larger operation: years of product and customer data, order history, custom attributes, configurable and bundled products, pricing rules, extensions, bespoke development, accumulated SEO authority, ERP and PIM and CRM integrations, international store views and B2B functionality.

The question is not how to move from Magento to Shopify. It is how to move the business without losing the data, functionality, search visibility and operational processes it depends on.

There is now a deadline attached to that question, which there was not two years ago. Adobe has published firm end of support dates for every Magento 2.4 release line, and for merchants on Magento Open Source those dates arrive without the safety net Adobe Commerce customers get.

Key Takeaways

• Adobe ended standard support for Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source 2.4.6 on 11 August 2026. Magento Open Source receives no extended support at all, so Open Source merchants on 2.4.5 or 2.4.6 are already unsupported
• Shopify B2B is no longer restricted to Shopify Plus. Since 2026, companies, catalogs, net payment terms, quantity price breaks, vaulted cards and purchase order numbers are available on Basic, Grow and Advanced too
• Magento migrations are usually the most complex platform migration because of Entity Attribute Value data structures, multi store configurations and enterprise integrations
• Structure matters more than volume. Migrating 5,000 heavily customised products is often harder than migrating 100,000 simple ones
• Do not redirect Magento layered navigation URLs blindly. Redirect only those with indexation, organic traffic or backlinks
• Integration reconnection is frequently the largest cost driver, ahead of product count

Quick Answer

A Magento to Shopify migration has ten stages: audit the Magento environment, choose the Shopify plan and architecture, plan how data will be transformed, map URLs, decide how each extension will be replaced, migrate and reconcile the data, rebuild integrations, test complete business journeys, launch as a controlled cutover, then decommission Magento deliberately. The import itself is usually the easiest part. The difficult work is transforming Magento's flexible data model into Shopify's more opinionated one, protecting search visibility, and reconnecting the systems the business actually runs on. Most Magento merchants no longer need Shopify Plus purely for B2B, which changes the economics of the move considerably.

Table of Contents

• Why Magento Merchants Are Moving Now
• What Makes Magento Migrations Different
• Step 1: Audit Your Magento Store
• Step 2: Choose Your Shopify Plan and Architecture
• Step 3: Plan How Your Data Will Be Transformed
• Step 4: Map Magento URLs to Shopify
• Step 5: Replace Extensions and Custom Functionality
• Step 6: Migrate and Reconcile Your Data
• Step 7: Rebuild Your Integrations
• Step 8: Test, Launch and Decommission
• Do You Actually Need Shopify Plus?
• Why Matters Perspective
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Thoughts

Why Magento Merchants Are Moving Now

Most articles on this subject give the reasons merchants leave Magento in general terms: total cost of ownership, the need for specialist PHP developers, the pain of version upgrades. All true, none of it urgent.

What is urgent is Adobe's published lifecycle policy. Each release line gets a three year standard support window from its general availability date, then in some cases a further year of extended support, then in a few cases a one time security only period. Here is where the lines stand, from Adobe's own lifecycle documentation.

Three things in that table deserve attention.

First, extended support is available to Adobe Commerce customers only. It does not apply to the Magento Open Source code base. If you run Open Source on 2.4.5 or 2.4.6, you are already outside support, with no quality fixes and no security patches, whatever the extended support column says.

Second, Adobe has introduced version upgrade enforcement for Adobe Commerce on Cloud. From 1 June 2027 it will stop maintaining Cloud environments running unsupported versions and will suspend traffic to that infrastructure, taking the storefront offline. Adobe states that environments still non compliant after suspension may be decommissioned, with hosted data and assets permanently deleted. Most merchants have not registered that one.

Third, the dependency clock runs separately from the platform clock. Adobe does not patch third party dependencies that reach end of life while you are inside a support window. PHP 8.1 ended on 31 December 2025 and PHP 8.2 ends on 31 December 2026, both affecting older 2.4 lines and both flagged by Adobe as putting PCI compliance at risk.

None of this means Magento is ending. Adobe released 2.4.9 in May 2026 and supports it to May 2029. It does mean a large group of merchants now has a dated, externally imposed decision, and that upgrading in place is no longer the only option worth pricing. Adobe's recommended destination for Cloud customers is Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service. Shopify is the other serious option, and the real comparison is between those two rather than between Shopify and the Magento install you already have. Our Magento vs Shopify comparison covers that decision.

What Makes Magento Migrations Different

Moving a straightforward store between two SaaS platforms is largely a matter of transferring data, rebuilding the storefront, reconnecting integrations and protecting SEO. Magento goes deeper, because a Magento store should be treated as an ecommerce system rather than a website. Three differences drive almost all of the extra work.

Structure matters more than size. Moving 100,000 simple products is often easier than migrating 5,000 built around highly customised attributes, configurable relationships and bespoke pricing logic.

Customisation accumulates. A mature implementation may carry dozens of third party and bespoke extensions, custom checkout logic, modified pricing rules, custom APIs and middleware written specifically around Magento. Some stores run 100 or more. The wrong question during migration is which Shopify app replaces a given extension. The right question is what business requirement it fulfils. Sometimes nobody remembers, and the business no longer needs it. That is technical debt a migration should remove rather than reproduce.

The data models differ fundamentally. Magento makes extensive use of an Entity Attribute Value model, which gives it enormous flexibility in how products and attributes are structured. Shopify is deliberately more opinionated, so complex Magento product data usually has to be transformed rather than transferred. Business logic compounds this, because it is often invisible from the storefront: pricing may depend on customer groups, quantity tiers, catalogue and cart price rules, website scope, store view or custom extension code. That logic has to be found before Magento is retired, or a feature will appear to have migrated correctly while the rule underneath it has quietly disappeared.

Step 1: Audit Your Magento Store

Establish exactly what Magento is doing today before deciding what Shopify should look like. For a complex store this is a formal discovery exercise, not a checklist.

Document the version first: Magento 1, Magento 2 Open Source, or Adobe Commerce, with the exact patch level, since available APIs, export routes and migration approaches all differ. Official support for Magento 1 ended in June 2020, so those merchants are making this decision six years past the deadline.

Build an extension register recording name, vendor, version, purpose, whether it is actually used, what data it creates, what systems it talks to, who owns it, and the intended Shopify replacement. Classify each as: replace with native functionality, replace with an app, rebuild through custom development, replace with an external system, or retire. This exercise alone usually simplifies the eventual build significantly.

Map the multi store architecture if you have one: websites, store groups, store views, domains, languages, currencies, product availability, pricing differences, customer groups and inventory relationships. Do not assume every store view needs to become a separate Shopify store.

Catalogue product types by volume, paying particular attention to configurable and bundle products. Export attribute sets, attributes, types, allowed values, scope, filtering behaviour and storefront visibility, then decide which genuinely need to survive. An attribute used only by an abandoned extension does not deserve a new Shopify metafield.

Document the category tree with URLs, assigned products, SEO content, metadata, organic traffic and backlinks, since that feeds both catalogue architecture and SEO mapping. Record customer groups and how they affect pricing, tax, discounts, catalogue visibility and payment or shipping restrictions. Then create an integration register covering every connected system, the data exchanged, the direction of flow, frequency, integration method, business owner and consequences of failure.

Finally, capture a performance baseline before anything changes. Export organic sessions, organic revenue, conversion rate, transactions, average order value, highest traffic and highest revenue landing pages, important rankings, indexed pages, top linked pages and existing 404s from Google Analytics and Google Search Console. You cannot assess the impact of a migration without knowing how the Magento store performed beforehand.

Step 2: Choose Your Shopify Plan and Architecture

This decision should happen before you begin transforming data or rebuilding functionality, and it has changed significantly.

For several years the standard advice to Magento merchants with wholesale requirements was that B2B meant Shopify Plus. That is no longer accurate, and repeating it will push merchants onto a materially more expensive plan than they need.

Shopify B2B now runs on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. Companies, company locations, location level permissions, catalogs, quantity rules and price breaks, net payment terms, vaulted credit cards, ACH in the United States, draft order to invoice, purchase order numbers, quick order lists, sales staff permissions and Shopify Flow automations using B2B objects are available on all four. What Plus adds is scale rather than access.

Feature availability is from Shopify's B2B features by plan documentation. Note that B2B catalog features on Basic, Grow and Advanced require the store to be using the current version of Shopify Markets.

The practical consequence for a Magento merchant is this. If your wholesale operation needs customer level pricing assigned directly to individual companies, more than three catalogs, or deposit and partial payment workflows, Plus is genuinely required. If it needs company accounts, negotiated price lists within three catalogs, net terms and purchase order numbers, it probably is not.

Beyond B2B, Plus remains relevant for high transaction volumes, multiple storefronts, checkout extensibility beyond what the standard plans allow, and advanced automation. Do not choose Plus because your Magento implementation was expensive, and do not force an enterprise operation onto a standard plan purely to reduce platform cost. Our Shopify Plus guide covers the wider decision.

On architecture, Magento's website, store and store view hierarchy does not map onto Shopify directly. A merchant running separate UK, European and United States websites does not automatically need three Shopify stores, because Shopify Markets can often consolidate countries, currencies, languages and domains into one. Separate stores still make sense where markets differ materially in catalogue, operations, legal entity, pricing or business process. Map that before deciding, not after the build starts.

Step 3: Plan How Your Data Will Be Transformed

This is where the difference between copying data and migrating data matters most. Forcing Magento data into Shopify without restructuring produces a store that technically contains the information and is miserable to operate.

Start by sorting Magento data three ways. Migrate what is needed for ongoing operations. Archive what the business must retain but does not need inside Shopify. Discard what is obsolete or redundant. That triage alone can cut complexity substantially.

Simple products usually translate cleanly. Configurable products need thought, because a Magento configurable acts as the parent of multiple simple products representing purchasable variations, and those relationships must be rebuilt using Shopify's product and variant architecture. Do not import every child product as an independent Shopify product unless that genuinely reflects how customers shop.

For attributes, the correct destination depends on what the attribute does, not what it is called.

Bundle and grouped products need the customer experience settled before an implementation is chosen. Is the bundle fixed or configurable? Can customers choose components? Is inventory tracked per component? Is there a bundle discount? Does it change fulfilment? Migrate the business behaviour, not Magento's product type label.

Customer migration covers names, emails, telephone numbers, addresses, tags, customer group information and marketing consent where that is properly documented. Magento customer groups may become Shopify tags, B2B company structures or integration level logic depending on purpose, and groups controlling pricing or catalogue access need particular care.

Passwords need a transition plan, because Magento passwords cannot be exported and imported as ordinary customer data. Decide how customers will reach their accounts after migration and brief the customer service team before launch. A technically flawless migration still fails if thousands of returning customers cannot log in.

On order history, ask what the business actually needs inside Shopify. Historical orders matter for customer service, returns, warranties, reporting and B2B purchasing history, but an order from a decade ago does not need to behave like a native Shopify order. For very large datasets an archive or external reporting solution is often better. Whatever you choose, preserve enough identifiers to reconcile Shopify records against Magento.

Step 4: Map Magento URLs to Shopify

For established Magento merchants, SEO is usually the largest commercial risk in the migration.

Here is our own data on how often this is handled badly. Of the 80 stores we have migrated, 75 arrived with no redirect map in place from the previous platform or agency. That is not an occasional oversight. It is the normal condition of an inbound migration.

Crawl Magento before changing anything, combining the crawl with Google Search Console, Google Analytics, backlink tools and XML sitemaps. The purpose is not to catalogue every URL Magento has generated. It is to identify which carry traffic, authority or commercial value.

Layered navigation is the Magento specific complication. One category can generate large numbers of filtered and parameterised URLs combining colour, size, brand, price and other attributes, and depending on historical configuration some may be indexed while others were canonicalised or blocked. Do not redirect every parameter combination. Establish first which URLs are indexed, receive organic traffic, have backlinks or represent useful search intent.

Then give every commercially valuable URL a planned destination: Magento product to Shopify product, Magento category to Shopify collection, Magento CMS page to Shopify page. Where no exact replacement exists, redirect to the closest genuinely relevant page. Avoid sending thousands of unrelated URLs to the homepage simply to clear 404 errors, because a redirect should preserve intent rather than suppress a report.

Redirects are only part of the job. Also review page titles, meta descriptions, H1 headings, product copy, category content, internal links, canonical signals, structured data and indexability. A Magento category generating substantial organic revenue can still lose performance when it is replaced by an attractive Shopify collection that has shed its useful content, even where the redirect is technically correct.

Our guide to migrating to Shopify without losing your SEO rankings covers this workstream in full, including the redirect map format we use.

Step 5: Replace Extensions and Custom Functionality

Start from the extension register in Step 1, not from a shopping list of Shopify apps. For each extension, identify the business outcome it supports, then choose the cleanest Shopify route to that outcome.

Use native functionality where it genuinely meets the requirement, since it reduces app costs, integration dependencies, maintenance and theme conflicts. Where apps are the answer, evaluate them on more than features: ongoing cost, data access, performance impact, integration capability, support and how hard the app would be to remove later. The goal is a deliberate app stack, not Magento extension sprawl recreated elsewhere.

Where custom development is the answer, ask first whether the functionality still creates enough commercial value to justify rebuilding it. Migration is a rare chance to challenge years of accumulated technical decisions, and a cleaner implementation is one of the biggest long term benefits of leaving a heavily customised environment.

Some Magento functionality has no direct Shopify equivalent and needs building through Shopify's APIs. In our experience of quoting these projects, bespoke functionality and complex international shipping are the two most common reasons a Magento migration moves out of standard pricing and into a custom tier. If your store has either, expect that to be the dominant line in the quote rather than product count.

Step 6: Migrate and Reconcile Your Data

For a complex Magento store this should never be a single import. Run one or more test migrations, validate, refine the transformation rules, then complete a final migration close to launch.

Method depends on complexity: Shopify compatible CSV imports, specialist migration applications, Magento API extraction, custom scripts, the Shopify APIs, or a combination. For a straightforward catalogue, migration software handles most of it. For a large implementation with complex attributes, custom entities and integrations, custom tooling is usually more appropriate. The question is not how fast data can move. It is whether the process reliably transforms Magento's data model into the architecture you designed in Step 2.

Test with a representative sample: simple and configurable products, products with many attributes, bundles, products with multiple images, different customer groups, historical orders and known edge cases. A sample of your easiest products proves nothing.

Then reconcile. An import reporting success is not the same as correct data. Compare Magento against Shopify on product and variant counts, SKUs, prices, inventory, customer and order counts, images, product relationships and important attributes. For large migrations, automated reconciliation reports find discrepancies manual checking will not.

Finally, plan the delta. Magento keeps trading while the Shopify store is built, so new customers, orders, products and inventory changes accumulate after the initial migration. A final delta migration close to launch captures them. Without it, the Shopify database is stale on day one.

Step 7: Rebuild Your Integrations

For established Magento merchants this is the highest risk part of the project. The storefront can look perfect while the operation behind it is broken.

Document what actually happens rather than that two systems are connected. Not "Shopify connects to ERP", but: PIM sends product information to Shopify, ERP sends pricing and inventory to Shopify, Shopify sends orders and customers to ERP, WMS sends fulfilment and tracking back to Shopify. That level of detail makes it obvious which system owns each piece of information.

Use the migration to resolve unclear data ownership. If Magento and the ERP both modified inventory, decide which becomes authoritative. The same applies to product information, pricing, customer records, order status and fulfilment.

Test failure as well as success. What happens when the ERP is unavailable, a SKU is unknown, inventory cannot update, an order cannot export, or a webhook is delayed? Critical integrations need retry, monitoring and recovery behaviour. A successful migration preserves the operational chain, not just the website.

Step 8: Test, Launch and Decommission

Our complete Shopify migration checklist covers the launch sequence in full, so this section only notes what differs on a Magento project.

Test complete business journeys rather than page templates, and place end to end transactions that you then follow through every downstream system: payment, ERP or OMS, warehouse, fulfilment, tracking and customer notification. Run user acceptance testing with the people who operate the business. A developer can confirm an order exists. A customer service agent can tell you whether the information needed to help a customer is actually reachable.

Launch as a planned cutover, keeping the window in which Magento and Shopify can diverge as short as practical. That usually means freezing Magento changes while the final delta and cutover complete.

Then decommission deliberately rather than cancelling hosting the day Shopify takes its first order. Keep the environment accessible for a defined period, typically 30 to 60 days, for reconciliation and for the integration dependency nobody documented. Archive what your data retention policy requires, then disable obsolete integrations, remove webhooks, retire scheduled jobs and revoke migration credentials. Do not leave an abandoned Magento installation publicly reachable. An unpatched store on an unsupported version is precisely what attackers scan for, and after the dates in the table above that describes a great many Magento stores.

Do You Actually Need Shopify Plus?

For most Magento merchants, less often than they expect, and less often than was true a year ago.

The B2B expansion removed what used to be the single most common reason a Magento merchant was told to budget for Plus. Company accounts, negotiated pricing within three catalogs, net terms, purchase order numbers, quantity breaks and vaulted cards no longer require it.

Plus is genuinely the right answer where the business needs unlimited B2B catalogs, catalogs assigned directly to individual companies or locations for customer level pricing, deposit or partial payment workflows, payment requests per fulfilment, multiple storefronts, very high transaction volumes, or deep checkout customisation.

For merchants using Adobe Commerce B2B functionality, the comparison needs to go well past feature checklists. Map the existing workflows individually, covering company structures, buyers, price lists, payment terms, purchasing permissions, product availability and order processes, then validate how each would be implemented. The objective is to establish whether Shopify can support the required business outcomes, not whether it can reproduce every Magento configuration screen.

For some merchants Shopify Plus substantially reduces infrastructure complexity. For others with highly specialised requirements, Adobe Commerce remains the better architectural fit. The decision should follow that assessment rather than a predetermined preference.

Why Matters Perspective

A Magento to Shopify migration should simplify the ecommerce operation rather than relocate its complexity.

Magento stores accumulate years of extensions, custom development and infrastructure decisions. Some remain essential. Others exist because they solved a problem five years ago and nobody has revisited it since. A migration is the moment to separate the two, and realistically the only moment, because nobody audits 100 extensions during business as usual.

Our approach starts by establishing what creates commercial value, what data must be preserved, which SEO assets require protection, which integrations are operationally critical, and which Magento functionality can simply be dropped. The Shopify architecture is then designed around the future business rather than around Magento's historical implementation.

We would also encourage any merchant reading this to price the alternative honestly. Adobe's recommended path for Cloud customers is Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, and for some businesses that is the right answer. A Shopify agency telling you to move to Shopify is not exactly a surprise. What should decide it is a genuine comparison of both platforms against your actual requirements, your actual integration burden and your actual internal capability to maintain a platform.

Our ecommerce agency services cover the wider replatforming process, and our Shopify developers handle custom development and integration work. If you want a view on whether Shopify fits, we would rather tell you early that it does not.

The aim is not to make Shopify behave exactly like Magento. It is to preserve what makes the business successful while creating a simpler platform for what comes next.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does support end for my Magento version? Adobe gives each 2.4 release line three years of standard support from its general availability date. Standard support ended for 2.4.4 in April 2025, for 2.4.5 in August 2025, and for 2.4.6 on 11 August 2026. Support for 2.4.7 ends on 31 May 2027, for 2.4.8 on 31 May 2028, and for 2.4.9 on 31 May 2029. Extended support adds a further year for some lines, but it is available to Adobe Commerce customers only and does not apply to the Magento Open Source code base.

Do I need Shopify Plus to migrate a Magento B2B store? Usually not. Shopify B2B runs on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, and most features including companies, catalogs, net payment terms, quantity price breaks, vaulted credit cards, purchase order numbers and self serve ordering are available on all of them. Plus is required for unlimited B2B catalogs, catalogs assigned directly to a company or location for customer level pricing, deposit requirements, partial payments and payment requests per fulfilment. Contextual checkout and storefront through Shopify Markets require Advanced or Plus.

How much does a Magento to Shopify migration cost? Cost depends on catalogue complexity, custom functionality, integrations, multi store requirements, SEO work and B2B requirements. For Magento merchants specifically, integrations and custom development are usually larger cost drivers than product count. In our experience quoting these projects, bespoke functionality and complex international shipping are the two most common reasons a migration moves beyond standard pricing into a custom quote.

How long does a Magento to Shopify migration take? There is no universal timeframe. A relatively straightforward Magento store migrates considerably faster than an enterprise implementation involving multiple websites, ERP integrations, custom product structures and B2B functionality. The timeline should follow the actual scope rather than an arbitrary launch date, and discovery on a complex store often takes longer than the build.

Can I migrate from Magento 1 to Shopify? Yes. Official support for Magento 1 ended in June 2020. For businesses still running it, moving directly to Shopify avoids undertaking a separate Magento 1 to Magento 2 replatform and then potentially reconsidering the platform again afterwards.

Will I lose my Magento SEO rankings when migrating to Shopify? Not necessarily, but SEO has to be treated as a dedicated migration workstream rather than a final week task. Careful URL mapping, redirects, content preservation, metadata migration and post launch monitoring substantially reduce avoidable risk. Magento layered navigation needs particular attention, because a single category can generate large numbers of filtered URLs and only some of them carry genuine search value.

What happens to my Magento extensions? Magento extensions do not transfer to Shopify. Each one should be assessed to establish whether its underlying business requirement is met by native Shopify functionality, by an app, by custom development, or no longer needs meeting at all. A meaningful proportion of extensions on a mature Magento store turn out to be unnecessary.

Final Thoughts

A successful Magento to Shopify migration is not about moving products between platforms. It is about preserving the valuable parts of an established ecommerce operation while removing complexity that no longer earns its cost.

Audit Magento thoroughly. Map the data carefully. Protect search visibility. Rebuild the integrations the business actually runs on. Test real business processes rather than page templates. Choose between Shopify and Shopify Plus on requirements rather than on assumptions that were accurate two years ago.

There is now a date attached to the decision. Whether the destination is Shopify or Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, the one option not available indefinitely is staying where you are.

Done properly, the result should not feel like a simplified copy of Magento. It should feel like a cleaner ecommerce architecture built around where the business goes next.

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