Magento → Shopify Migration, 2026 edition.

Why Magento exits stall

Five things I clean up after when teams DIY a Magento exit or hire a generic migration shop: no 1:1 redirect map (organic traffic drops 30-60%), configurable products mapped wrong (variant SKU duplication, inventory desync), customer passwords lost (forced reset done badly = 30% of repeat buyers locked out), B2B agreed-rate pricing erased, schema and meta tags wiped. Each is recoverable on a redo, but expensive in lost months.

Modeling the catalog

Magento has a flexible product model — simple, configurable, bundle, grouped, virtual, downloadable. Shopify has products with up to 3 options and 100 variants per product. Translating between the two requires per-case judgment: configurables map cleanly to variants, bundles are best modeled as Shopify "kits" via an inventory app or as a parent product with line-item discounting, grouped products usually become collections, virtual/downloadable map to Shopify's digital-product flow.

Customer + order migration

Customer export from Magento covers names, emails, addresses, custom attributes, and order history. Passwords don't transfer — Magento hashes are not Shopify hashes — so the only safe path is force-reset on first login + a transactional email explaining why. Order history can be imported as draft orders (full record) or as metafield archives (lighter, support-lookup only). Pick based on your support team's needs.

The 1:1 redirect map

The single highest-leverage SEO discipline in a migration. Generate a CSV mapping every Magento URL (category, subcategory, product, CMS page) to its Shopify equivalent. Audit manually for top traffic pages. Deploy as 301 redirects in Shopify's "URL Redirects" admin or via the bulk-redirects API. Resubmit sitemap to Search Console. Monitor Search Console crawl errors daily for the first 30 days.

B2B agreed-rate pricing

Magento's B2B module supports rich per-customer / per-company pricing with NET-30 terms. Shopify rebuilds this on the Plus tier via Shopify Functions (custom price logic per customer) or the B2B catalog feature (companies, locations, agreed-rate price lists, NET payment terms). Shopify Advanced doesn't do this cleanly, which is why I usually quote Plus for B2B migrations.

Payment + fulfillment rewire

Authorize.Net / Braintree / Stripe / Shopify Payments configuration. Gift cards migrated (Shopify's API supports importing existing gift-card codes + balances). Subscriptions (if any) need a parallel migration to ReCharge or Bold or Shopify's native subscriptions. Fulfillment routing — ShipStation, ShipBob, third-party warehouses — all reconnected. Apps + integrations (ERP, WMS, Klaviyo, GA4, Meta CAPI) reconnected before cutover.

SEO preservation discipline

Beyond the redirect map: meta titles + descriptions migrated 1:1 (don't let the new theme overwrite them with defaults), alt text preserved, canonical tags rebuilt, schema markup rebuilt to match (product, organization, breadcrumbs, FAQ), sitemap regenerated, robots.txt rebuilt to match Magento's allow/disallow rules. Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools resubmission on launch day.

Cutover plan

A written cutover plan with rollback procedure: pre-cutover checklist (DNS TTLs lowered, comms drafted, backups verified), cutover window (low-traffic, typically 2-6am client local), DNS swap, verification (top URLs return 200, redirects work, cart/checkout work end-to-end), post-cutover sweep (sitemap submission, broken-link check, real-customer test orders). Rollback path documented and tested before the cutover.

30/60/90-day monitoring

Search Console crawl-error monitoring daily for 30 days. Organic-traffic delta tracked in GA4 / Plausible / your analytics. Conversion-rate monitoring vs. pre-launch baseline. Customer-support ticket sweep for migration-related issues (forgotten passwords, lost loyalty points, missing order history). Written report at day 30 and day 60 with recovery trajectory and any remaining tail items to fix.

When to migrate to Shopify (not Plus)

Standard Shopify (Advanced) is fine when: B2B is small or non-existent, no custom checkout logic needed, no Scripts/Functions requirement, single-store / single-currency, sub-$1M/mo revenue. Plus is required when: B2B at scale, custom checkout (Checkout Extensibility), multi-store / multi-region, Scripts/Functions for advanced cart logic, dedicated launch support. Most migrations end up on Plus, but it's worth checking — Plus is $24K/year more than Advanced.

When to consider WordPress + WooCommerce instead

For B2B catalogs that are mostly content + light commerce (RFQ-driven, manual quotes, NET terms), WooCommerce on a custom theme is sometimes the right answer instead of Shopify. The post on /magento-to-wordpress-b2b-migration-romsons/ walks through a real case where it was. Cost is comparable; ongoing TCO is lower; flexibility is higher; the trade-off is more dev work to maintain Woo + plugins vs. Shopify's managed platform.