Magento to Shopify Migration Guide: Cost, Timeline & Steps

Magento 1 has been end-of-life since June 2020 — no security patches, no PCI compliance path forward — and Magento 2/Adobe Commerce merchants are commonly paying $2,000-$5,000 per security patch plus $500-$1,500/month in basic developer retainers just to keep an aging platform running. If you're reading this, you've likely already decided a migration is coming; the real questions are what it costs, how long it takes, and what specifically breaks along the way. This guide answers all three with real ranges rather than a single misleadingly precise number, plus the data-mapping gotchas and post-launch realities most migration guides skip entirely.

Which Magento are you actually migrating from?

The specific version matters more than most guides acknowledge, because the export path and the underlying urgency differ meaningfully between them:

Check your version via Admin → System → Web Setup Wizard, or by inspecting app/etc/config.php directly — this is the first item on the audit checklist later in this guide, and it changes which export tools and processes actually apply to your store.

Choosing your Shopify destination: Standard, Advanced, or Plus?

Most Magento Open Source merchants land on standard or Advanced Shopify; most Adobe Commerce merchants — precisely because Adobe Commerce's own feature set skews toward the complexity Plus is built for — end up needing Plus specifically for B2B Catalogs, Checkout Extensibility, or multi-store expansion capability. Getting this decision wrong in either direction is costly: choosing standard Shopify when your B2B pricing logic actually requires Plus means a second, avoidable migration later; choosing Plus when a simpler plan would have sufficed means paying enterprise pricing for capability you don't use. This decision belongs in the audit phase, not decided reflexively based on store size alone.

Cost by store complexity

Ranges reflect convergence across multiple independently-published 2026 sources (Ringly, Conversion Design, shopexperts, ecomm.solutions, Fingerlakes1, Folio3, APPWRK, MageDelight), which vary in their specific quotes but agree closely on these bands. Adobe Commerce (versus Magento Open Source) migrations skew toward the higher end of each range due to B2B and multi-store complexity.

The wide range within each tier isn't pricing opacity — it reflects genuine variation in what's actually being rebuilt. Two stores with the same SKU count can have wildly different migration costs if one has 40 custom extensions and complex tiered B2B pricing while the other runs a comparatively vanilla catalog. Custom development and integrations, not raw catalog size, are consistently cited as the biggest cost driver across sources.

Timeline by phase

The gap between Phase 2's duration (hours) and the total project timeline (weeks to months) surprises most first-time migrators, and it's worth internalizing directly: the data itself was never the bottleneck. A well-configured migration tool moves tens of thousands of SKUs, customer records, and historical orders in an afternoon. What actually consumes the calendar is everything data migration doesn't touch — rebuilding the visual and functional experience that lived in Magento's theme layer and extension ecosystem, verifying that rebuild works correctly across devices and payment methods, and only then flipping the switch. Any vendor quoting a timeline that's mostly Phase 2 duration is either scoping a genuinely trivial store or underestimating Phases 3 and 4.

Should you migrate at all? An honest framework

Most legitimate migration guides skip this section, but a responsible one shouldn't: staying on Magento is sometimes the correct call, and no agency's revenue model rewards saying so. Three scenarios where staying put, at least for now, is defensible:

• Deep, custom B2B pricing logic. Complex tiered pricing, customer-specific catalogs, and quote-based workflows that took years to build in Magento may not cleanly map to Shopify Plus B2B features, even though those features matured significantly in 2024. If this logic is core to how your business actually operates, budget real discovery time to confirm fit before committing to a timeline.
• Stable, low-growth operations under roughly $500K/year revenue. If your Magento setup is stable, adequately maintained, and your growth trajectory doesn't demand Shopify's ecosystem advantages, the migration cost may not pay back on a timeline that matters to your business.
• You just completed a major Magento 2 upgrade. If significant investment went into a recent Magento 2 migration or upgrade, the ROI math on immediately migrating again rarely works — let that investment run its useful life first.

Outside these scenarios, the math increasingly favors Shopify for mid-market DTC merchants specifically. One frequently cited industry comparison puts fully-loaded Adobe Commerce costs around $325,000/year against roughly $95,000/year for an equivalent Shopify Plus setup — other sources cite somewhat lower absolute figures ($50K-$300K+ versus $30K-$150K+ annually) but agree on the same directional gap. Migration cost typically pays back within 12-24 months for merchants who fit the profile this guide is written for.

Worth noting honestly: the underlying reason many merchants leave isn't a single feature gap, but an accumulated operational fatigue — one Shopify case study quotes a migrating brand's CTO describing the "sinking feeling" of never knowing when something in a self-hosted, heavily-customized Magento environment might break unexpectedly. That's a real, legitimate driver of migration decisions, distinct from any specific cost or feature comparison, and worth naming honestly rather than pretending every migration decision is purely a spreadsheet exercise.

What transfers cleanly vs. what needs manual work

Data-mapping gotchas worth planning for explicitly

1. Customer passwords cannot be migrated. Magento hashes passwords one-way; there's no way to decrypt and re-hash them for Shopify. Every customer needs a password-reset email at launch — plan the email copy and timing carefully, since a poorly-explained reset flow generates support tickets and lost logins. Send this email at the moment of cutover, not days later, and make the subject line specific enough that it doesn't read as spam to a customer who hasn't heard from your store in a while.
2. EAV attribute mapping is manual, not automatic. Magento's attribute model (Entity-Attribute-Value) is more granular and flexible than Shopify's metafield system by design; every custom attribute needs an explicit mapping decision, not a one-click transfer. Plan an extra week specifically if your catalog has 20+ products with visual swatches or other complex attribute-driven display logic, since these commonly need manual verification even after an automated mapping pass.
3. Configurable products with many option dimensions need restructuring. A product with 4+ variant dimensions (size, color, material, style, for instance) typically needs splitting into multiple products or a variant-extension app, since Shopify's native variant system caps dimension complexity below what some Magento catalogs use. Decide this mapping strategy during the audit phase, not mid-migration, since it affects URL structure and therefore your redirect map.
4. Most extensions need a Shopify-native replacement or custom rebuild. Layered navigation typically requires Shopify's Search & Discovery app or a third-party rebuild; custom checkout customizations require Shopify Plus's Checkout Extensibility, since standard Shopify checkout isn't customizable to the same degree Magento allows. Build a side-by-side list of every active Magento extension against its closest Shopify app equivalent (or "requires custom build") before quoting or committing to a timeline — this single document resolves more scope ambiguity than any other artifact in the audit phase.
5. Multi-store architecture needs a deliberate mapping decision. Magento's Website → Store → Store View hierarchy maps to Shopify in one of two ways: if your Magento "websites" share customers and orders, consolidate into one Shopify store using Markets; if they represent genuinely separate operations (different legal entities, different ERPs), use Shopify Plus expansion stores instead. Most multi-store Magento merchants need far fewer expansion stores than Plus's base plan includes (nine), typically one primary plus zero to three expansion stores — don't default to using all nine just because they're included.
6. Customer groups and tiered pricing map to Shopify Plus B2B Catalogs. This was historically "the reason we can't leave Magento" for B2B merchants, until Shopify's B2B Catalogs matured in 2024 — worth re-evaluating even if you ruled out Shopify for this reason in the past. Map every existing customer group's pricing rule explicitly against B2B Catalogs' current feature set before assuming parity; a small number of genuinely exotic pricing rules may still require a workaround app.
7. Order numbers change format. This is cosmetic but operationally significant: customers searching for an old Magento order number in a post-launch support interaction won't find a match, which is one of the most common sources of the post-launch support spike covered next. Consider a customer-facing FAQ entry or banner explaining the change proactively, rather than waiting for the support volume to arrive.

The post-launch support spike nobody warns you about

Budgeting support capacity for this spike — extra staffing, pre-written response templates for the two predictable issue types, and clear on-site messaging about the password reset — turns a foreseeable operational cost into a managed one instead of a fire drill. This is exactly the kind of detail most migration guides omit because it isn't part of the technical build, but it's a real cost and a real customer-experience risk that belongs in the same planning conversation as the technical timeline.

Protecting SEO through the migration

Search engines need time to process a full site structure and URL change, and some ranking fluctuation during that window is normal and expected — the risk is losing rankings permanently, which is almost always a redirect-mapping failure, not an inherent platform penalty. With comprehensive 301 redirects and preserved metadata, typical outcomes across sources are ranking fluctuations for 3-4 weeks post-launch, returning to baseline or better by weeks 6-12 — partly because Shopify's infrastructure often improves Core Web Vitals scores versus a self-hosted Magento setup, which is itself a modest positive ranking signal.

The failure mode worth taking seriously: incomplete or missing redirect mapping is cited as causing 30-70% organic traffic loss sustained for 6-12 months in poorly-executed DIY migrations — a genuinely severe, largely avoidable outcome. Every indexed Magento URL needs an explicit redirect decision before launch, not a best-effort pass after the fact. Post-launch, verify your domain in Google Search Console, resubmit your sitemap, and monitor crawl errors and ranking movement weekly for at least 60 days.

One documented industry case, cited by a migration-focused source, illustrates what a well-executed redirect strategy can achieve: a global brand migrating from Magento to Shopify with a meticulous pre-migration SEO plan — full redirect mapping, preserved metadata — reported zero organic traffic loss in the first month and measurable organic gains within two months, attributed partly to improved Core Web Vitals performance on Shopify's infrastructure. Treat this as an illustration of the achievable outcome with careful execution, not a guaranteed result independent of how thoroughly the redirect and metadata work is actually done.

Budget for the app subscription cost you'll add post-launch

Replacing Magento's extension ecosystem with Shopify's app ecosystem isn't free, and it's a cost most cost estimates quoted for the migration project itself don't include as an ongoing line item. Industry benchmarks put typical additional monthly app spend at $200-$800/month for feature parity with a comparable Magento extension stack — a real, recurring cost worth budgeting into your post-migration operating expenses, not just the one-time project cost. A useful discipline in the weeks after launch: review every installed app against actual usage and uninstall anything without a clear, specific job, since Shopify's app ecosystem makes it easy to accumulate subscriptions incrementally without ever revisiting whether each one still earns its cost.

DIY vs. agency-led: an honest cost comparison

DIY migrations technically work for Magento specifically only in narrow cases: deep knowledge of both Magento's admin-side data model (EAV extraction, configurable product mapping, customer group export) and Shopify's development side (Liquid themes, app configuration, redirect setup) is required, typically 200-400 hours of focused work over 6-12 weeks even for a comparatively simple store. Recovery from a botched DIY migration commonly costs $15,000-$50,000 in agency cleanup — the math rarely favors DIY once a store has any real customization, which describes most Magento stores by the nature of why merchants chose Magento in the first place.

The honest DIY-suitability test: if you can answer, in specific detail, what your redirect strategy is for every indexed URL, how your configurable products with more than three option dimensions will be restructured, and which of your active extensions have no Shopify equivalent — and you have the in-house time to execute all three correctly — DIY is a legitimate path. If any of those three questions doesn't have a specific answer yet, that gap is exactly what an agency's audit phase exists to close, and attempting the migration without closing it first is how the $15,000-$50,000 cleanup costs above actually happen.

The launch window: parallel-run and rollback planning

The cutover itself is comparatively low-risk if the preceding phases were done thoroughly, but it's still worth planning deliberately rather than treating it as a simple DNS switch. Run both the old Magento store and the new Shopify store in parallel for 48-72 hours after the DNS switch, verifying orders, inventory sync, and payment processing behave correctly on the new platform before fully decommissioning the old one. Keep the Magento installation accessible (even if not publicly live) for at least 30 days post-launch, in case a data discrepancy surfaces that requires cross-referencing the original source — 60 days is a more conservative, commonly cited window for larger or more complex stores where post-launch data questions are more likely.

A rollback plan — however unlikely you expect to need it — should be agreed and documented before launch day, not improvised under pressure if something goes wrong. At minimum, this means knowing exactly how to redirect traffic back to the Magento store, how long that would take, and who owns the decision to trigger it. Having this plan documented and unused is a much better outcome than needing it and not having one.

What actually changes about running the business afterward

Beyond the migration project itself, several sources converge on the same operational shifts merchants report after moving from Magento to Shopify — worth setting expectations for beyond the migration timeline itself. Infrastructure and maintenance overhead drops substantially: no more server management, PCI compliance audits, or security patch scheduling, since Shopify handles all of this as part of the platform rather than as a merchant responsibility. Developer talent becomes easier and typically cheaper to find — the Magento-specific PHP development community has been shrinking relative to demand for several years, while Shopify's Liquid and app-development talent pool is larger and still growing, which translates directly into faster hiring and more competitive rates for ongoing work.

Checkout conversion is one of the more consistently cited improvements, with multiple sources reporting outcomes in the 10-20% range attributable to Shopify's checkout, though this figure depends heavily on how optimized (or not) the pre-migration Magento checkout was — a store that had already heavily customized and optimized its Magento checkout may see a smaller lift than one running a largely default, unoptimized setup. None of these changes happen automatically at cutover; they materialize over the weeks and months following launch as the new operational model settles in, which is exactly why the 60-90 day post-launch monitoring window matters as much as the migration project itself.

A pre-migration audit checklist

Spending a week here saves weeks of cleanup later — this is the step every source reviewed for this guide independently identifies as where migrations are won or lost. Treat this list as the minimum viable audit, not an exhaustive one; a genuinely complex store (heavy B2B logic, deep ERP integration, extensive multi-store setup) will surface additional items specific to its own configuration once the audit is underway.

• Confirm your exact Magento version (1, 2 Open Source, or Adobe Commerce Cloud/On-Premise) — the data export path differs meaningfully between them
• Full product catalog inventory: total SKUs, configurable products, bundled products, grouped products, virtual/downloadable products, and their respective Shopify mapping strategy
• Complete list of custom attributes and a mapping decision for each against Shopify metafields
• Full extension/module audit — flag every extension touching catalog (search, navigation), checkout, and customer data specifically, since these are the highest-risk categories for a missing Shopify equivalent
• Customer group and tiered-pricing documentation, mapped against Shopify Plus B2B Catalogs if applicable
• Multi-store architecture decision: consolidate to Markets, or use Plus expansion stores
• Full list of connected systems (ERP, WMS, CRM, PIM, email, accounting) and a reconnection plan for each
• Complete indexed URL export for redirect mapping — every URL, not a sample

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to migrate from Magento to Shopify?

Based on cross-referenced 2026 market data, simple stores with minimal customization cost $1,500-$25,000; mid-market stores (roughly 1,000-10,000 SKUs) with some customization and integrations cost $20,000-$150,000; and large or enterprise stores with complex B2B logic, multi-store setups, or deep ERP integration cost $75,000-$600,000+. The exact figure depends heavily on custom Magento extensions, integrations, and catalog complexity, not just SKU count.

How long does a Magento to Shopify migration take?

Small stores under 1,000 SKUs typically take 2-4 weeks. Mid-market stores take 4-8 weeks for simpler catalogs and 8-20 weeks when B2B pricing, multi-store setups, or ERP integration are involved. Large stores with 10,000-50,000+ SKUs and custom integrations typically take 12-28 weeks (3-6 months). The data transfer itself takes hours; theme rebuild, integration rebuild, and QA are what consume the calendar time.

What data cannot be directly migrated from Magento to Shopify?

Customer passwords cannot be migrated because they're one-way hashed; every customer needs a password reset at launch. Most Magento extensions (roughly 90%, per industry estimates) have no direct Shopify equivalent and need an alternative app or custom rebuild. Complex configurable products with 4+ option dimensions, custom checkout flows, and Page Builder content blocks all require manual rebuilding rather than automated transfer.

Will I lose SEO rankings when migrating from Magento to Shopify?

Not if 301 redirects are comprehensive and metadata is preserved. With proper redirect mapping, most stores see ranking fluctuations for 3-4 weeks post-launch and return to baseline or better by weeks 6-12, partly due to Shopify's faster infrastructure improving Core Web Vitals. Incomplete redirect mapping is the primary cause of serious, lasting organic traffic loss, not the platform migration itself.