A Magento to Shopify Plus migration moves your products, customers, orders and content to Shopify, rebuilds your storefront and redirects every old URL so you keep your rankings. The migrations that go well are the ones planned in detail before any data moves. This checklist covers every step, from audit to post-launch monitoring.
Why brands move from Magento to Shopify Plus
- Lower running costs: no servers, patches or version upgrades to manage.
- Faster changes: marketing teams can edit pages and launch campaigns without a developer for every change.
- Built-in scale: Shopify handles hosting, security and traffic spikes.
- Modern checkout: Shopify’s checkout is fast and trusted, and Plus lets you customize it with checkout extensibility.
Phase 1: Audit and planning
- List every Magento extension and decide what replaces it: a Shopify feature, an app or custom development.
- Export a full crawl of your current site so you know every URL that gets traffic or links.
- Record your top landing pages, rankings and conversion rate as a baseline.
- Map integrations such as ERP, PIM, 3PL, email and reviews, and check each has a Shopify connection.
- Decide what data moves: products, customers, orders, reviews, blog posts, CMS pages, gift cards.
- Agree a launch date away from your busiest sales periods.
Phase 2: Data mapping
Magento and Shopify structure data differently, so mapping is where most problems are prevented:
| Magento | Shopify |
|---|---|
| Configurable products | Products with variants (check Shopify’s variant and option limits) |
| Attributes | Product options, metafields or tags |
| Categories | Collections (manual or automated) |
| Customer groups | Customer tags, segments or B2B companies and catalogs |
| CMS pages and blocks | Pages, sections and metaobjects |
| Cart price rules | Discounts or Shopify Functions |
Phase 3: Store build
- Build or customize the Shopify theme, ideally improving UX rather than copying the old design one to one.
- Set up payments, shipping, taxes and Markets for each country you sell to.
- Install and configure the apps that replace your Magento extensions.
- Rebuild custom checkout logic with checkout extensibility and Shopify Functions.
- Set up B2B catalogs and company accounts if you sell wholesale.
Phase 4: SEO protection
- Map every old URL to its new Shopify URL and create 301 redirects in bulk.
- Carry over page titles, meta descriptions and image alt text.
- Keep the same main content and headings on key landing pages.
- Check canonical tags, structured data and the XML sitemap.
- Plan to submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console on launch day.
Shopify uses fixed URL patterns such as /products/ and /collections/, so almost every Magento URL changes. Redirects are what protect your rankings.
Phase 5: Data migration and testing
- Run a test import into a development store and check products, variants, prices, images and inventory.
- Check customer accounts and order history.
- Test checkout end to end with real payment methods and shipping rates.
- Test every redirect on a sample of top URLs.
- Check page speed on mobile and fix heavy apps or images.
Phase 6: Launch
- Freeze changes on Magento shortly before launch.
- Run a final data sync for new orders and customers.
- Point the domain to Shopify at a low-traffic time.
- Send customer account invites, since passwords cannot be migrated.
- Submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console.
Phase 7: After launch
- Watch 404 errors and add missing redirects quickly.
- Compare traffic, rankings and conversion rate against your baseline weekly.
- Fix UX issues customers report in the first weeks.
- Start a conversion rate optimization program once traffic settles.
Common migration mistakes to avoid
- Skipping redirects, which is the biggest cause of lost traffic.
- Copying the old design instead of improving it.
- Recreating every Magento extension instead of simplifying.
- Launching during a peak sales period.
- Not testing checkout with real payments.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose SEO when moving from Magento to Shopify?
Not if you map every URL and set up 301 redirects, and keep your titles, descriptions and main content. Some movement in the first weeks is normal while Google recrawls.
Can I migrate customer passwords from Magento?
No. Passwords are encrypted and cannot be moved, so customers set a new password through an account invite email.
Should I move to Shopify or Shopify Plus?
It depends on your needs and volume. Read Shopify vs Shopify Plus for a full comparison.
Can my store keep selling during the migration?
Yes. The Shopify store is built and tested separately, and the switch happens at a planned time.
Planning a Magento to Shopify Plus migration?
I plan and run migrations from Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix and Shopware, with SEO protection built in. See Shopify migration services, read the Shopware to Shopify Plus case study, or get a free migration quote.