How to Migrate from Magento to Shopify: A Practical 2026 Guide

If you're running a store on Magento in 2026, you've probably already felt the pressure to move. Adobe's support timelines keep forcing upgrades, the cost of hosting and maintaining the platform keeps climbing, and finding Magento developers has become genuinely hard. For a large and growing number of brands, the answer is a Magento to Shopify migration.

This is a practical guide to how that migration actually works — the process, the real costs and timelines, the Magento-specific things that break, and how to protect the SEO you've built. We're a Shopify agency, so weigh our perspective accordingly, but this is written to help you plan the move properly, including the parts most guides gloss over.

Why brands are leaving Magento

The migration wave is real and measurable. According to StoreLeads data, Magento's active store count dropped from around 163,700 in Q4 2022 to about 112,600 by Q1 2026 — roughly 51,000 stores gone in three years. The reasons are consistent:

Adobe's support timeline forces the issue. Per Adobe's own software lifecycle policy, Adobe Commerce 2.4.5 support ended in August 2025 and 2.4.6 support ends in August 2026. If you're on either, you face a forced choice: upgrade to a newer, more expensive Adobe Commerce release, or move to a platform that doesn't charge you extra just to stay current on security patches.

Magento 1 is long dead. If you're still on Magento 1 — end-of-life since June 2020, with no security patches — migration isn't optional, it's overdue. Running an unsupported ecommerce platform is a security and compliance liability: PCI DSS requires systems to be kept patched and up to date, and end-of-life software with no available patches is a direct compliance exposure a security assessor will flag. Magento 1 has been unsupported for over five years.

The total cost of ownership keeps rising. Magento means paying for managed hosting, a dedicated server environment, security patching, and extension licenses that often run $200–$500 per year each. Independent analyses put Magento's total cost of ownership at 2 to 4 times higher than Shopify Plus for a comparable mid-market brand once you aggregate license, hosting, DevOps, security, and agency spend.

Developer scarcity. The PHP and Magento development community has been shrinking relative to demand. Finding, affording, and retaining Magento developers is harder every year — which makes every change slower and more expensive.

If several of these apply to you, the question isn't really whether to migrate — it's how to do it without losing data, rankings, or momentum.

Before you migrate: is Shopify the right destination?

An honest guide has to pause here. For the large majority of Magento merchants, Shopify (or Shopify Plus) is now a better fit — feature parity covers around 95% of common Magento use cases at a fraction of the total cost of ownership. But Magento retains an edge in a few narrow scenarios: extreme catalogue complexity, highly specialised B2B with deep EDI and ERP workflows, or requirements so specific that only full control over the codebase will do.

Worth knowing: the old "Shopify can't do B2B like Magento" objection has largely expired. As of 2026, Shopify's native B2B features support company accounts with buyer permissions, custom catalogs with tiered pricing, net payment terms, and quantity rules — and these features are now available across Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus plans, not just Plus. For roughly 80% of B2B Magento merchants, native Shopify B2B is now sufficient.

We cover the full platform-choice question in our guide on how to choose a platform, and the broader case for moving in why migrate to Shopify. If you're confident Shopify is the destination, here's how the migration actually works.

The Magento to Shopify migration process

A migration done well is a structured project. Here's the sequence that keeps it from going wrong.

1. Discovery and extension audit

Before anything moves, catalogue what you actually have. Every product type, every custom attribute, every integration, and — critically — every extension. This phase produces the project scope and sets the timeline, and it's where the real Magento-specific complexity surfaces.

The extension audit is the single most important step. Around 90% of Magento extensions have no direct Shopify equivalent — they were built specifically for Magento and don't transfer. Each one needs to be either replaced with a Shopify app, rebuilt as custom functionality, or consciously dropped. Flag especially the extensions that touch the catalogue (layered navigation, search), checkout (one-step checkout, payment integrations), and customer data (B2B suites, reward points, store credit).

This is also the moment to clean house. Discontinued products never deleted, duplicate customer records, orders from old test transactions — carrying that into Shopify doesn't solve the problem, it just relocates it. Good migrations fix the data, they don't just move it.

2. Build and data mapping

With scope defined, the store gets built on Shopify and the data gets mapped. This is where Magento's architecture makes things interesting:

• Products and attributes. Magento's EAV (entity-attribute-value) model doesn't map cleanly to Shopify. Configurable products become Shopify variants; custom attributes become metafields or metaobjects. This mapping is the core of the technical work and where generic migration tools tend to fail.
• Categories become collections. Magento categories map to Shopify collections — straightforward in principle, but the URL change has SEO consequences (more on that below).
• Customers — with a catch. Customer records migrate, but Magento password hashes can't transfer. They're one-way salted hashes with no recovery path. Every customer needs a password-reset email at launch — plan the communication around it so it doesn't look like a security incident.
• Orders and history. Order history migrates for reporting and customer-account continuity, with careful field mapping.
  Tools like Matrixify handle the bulk import, but the mapping logic — especially for complex catalogues — is where expertise matters.

3. Design and functionality rebuild

Migration always involves building the store on Shopify, whether you keep the existing design or refresh it. Many brands use the migration as the moment to redesign, since you're rebuilding the storefront anyway — though that enlarges the project. The alternative is to migrate first with a minimal visual refresh, then redesign after launch. The right call depends on how urgent the migration is versus how ready you are for a redesign.

Custom Magento functionality — Page Builder content blocks, custom checkout flows, layered navigation — gets rebuilt as Shopify sections, apps, or (on Plus) checkout extensibility. The XML from Magento's Page Builder doesn't translate; those blocks are rebuilt natively.

4. SEO preservation

This is the phase that determines whether you keep your organic traffic, and it's covered in its own section below because it's where rushed migrations do the most damage.

5. Testing and launch

Everything gets tested on a staging environment before going live — data integrity, checkout, payments, redirects, performance. A controlled "soft cutover" with active monitoring in the first weeks beats a hard launch and hope. Support volume typically spikes 2–4x immediately post-launch (partly from those password resets), so brief and scale your support team for it.

We handle this full scope on our Shopify migration service.

Protecting your SEO during a Magento migration

The biggest risk in any Magento to Shopify migration is losing the organic rankings you've spent years building. It's also the most preventable.

The core issue: Shopify uses fixed URL structures — /products/ and /collections/ — so your Magento URLs will change. Magento's /catalog/ paths, your .html product suffixes, your category structure — all of it changes. If those old URLs aren't redirected, every old link and every ranking hits a dead end.

The essential steps, per Shopify's own migration guidance:

• Crawl and map every URL from the Magento store, pairing each with its new Shopify equivalent in a one-to-one redirect map. For Magento specifically, SQL queries against the URL rewrite table are the reliable way to extract the full list.
• Set up 301 redirects for every changed URL — direct maps only, no chains. Standard Shopify supports up to 100,000 redirects; Shopify Plus supports up to 20 million, which matters for large Magento catalogues.
• Preserve title tags, meta descriptions, and structured data exactly.
• Test redirects on staging, then submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console on launch day and monitor 404s daily for the first two weeks.
  A temporary dip of 20–30% in organic traffic immediately after a major platform shift is common and usually recovers within a few weeks to a couple of months with clean redirects. Done badly, recovery can stretch to months and cost real revenue — which is exactly why this isn't a step to rush or hand to a generic tool.

Cost and timeline: honest ranges

Every migration is scoped differently, so treat these as rough guidance, not quotes. Based on current market data across multiple agencies:

These figures represent the range we've typically seen while working with different brands. Actual results may vary depending on your store's setup, customizations, third-party apps, and overall implementation.

Two honest notes. First, a very small, clean store can be migrated largely in-house using Shopify's CSV import and tools like Matrixify — budget 40–80 hours of your own time plus app and theme costs. Most stores past a basic catalogue benefit from an agency, mainly because of the extension mapping and SEO work. Second, most mid-market migrations break even within roughly 8–14 months through combined cost savings and the revenue lift from a faster storefront and Shopify's higher-converting checkout.

Shopify or Shopify Plus for Magento migrants?

Because Magento stores skew larger and more complex, the destination-tier question comes up more often here than in other migrations.

Standard or Advanced Shopify is the right destination for most Magento Open Source merchants — self-hosted stores with no Adobe license fee. Plus is justified at roughly $1M+/year revenue, complex B2B, multi-store needs, or specific Plus-only features (Functions, deeper Checkout Extensibility, the 20-million redirect limit for very large catalogues).

Shopify Plus is where most Adobe Commerce migrations land, because Adobe Commerce stores tend to have the scale, B2B complexity, and integration depth that standard Shopify can't fully replicate. If you're paying Adobe a license fee (typically $22K–$200K+/year), you're on Adobe Commerce, and Plus is usually the right target.

The honest bottom line

For most brands still on Magento in 2026 — especially those on unsupported versions, wrestling with rising costs, or struggling to find developers — a Magento to Shopify migration is one of the highest-return moves available. The TCO reduction alone (2–4x for most mid-market brands) frequently justifies it, before counting the checkout conversion lift and the operational relief of not self-hosting.

The value depends entirely on doing it properly: a real extension audit, careful EAV-to-metafield mapping, a complete 301 redirect map, and a tested launch. A rushed Magento migration is one of the few ways to hand back all the benefits at once — lost data, broken SEO, a support crisis at launch.

If you're weighing a move off Magento — including an honest read on whether it's the right call and which Shopify tier fits — get in touch. We'll scope it properly before anyone touches your store.

FAQ

How long does a Magento to Shopify migration take?
It depends on complexity. A straightforward store with a clean catalogue under 1,000 products and few integrations can migrate in 3–6 weeks. A mid-market store with customisation and integrations typically takes 6–12 weeks. Large or Adobe Commerce migrations — big catalogues, ERP integrations, complex B2B, multi-store — run 3–9 months. The biggest timeline drivers are catalogue complexity, the number of custom extensions to replace, and integration scope.

How much does it cost to migrate from Magento to Shopify?
Roughly $1,500–$10,000 for small, clean stores; $10,000–$75,000 for mid-market stores with some customisation; and $75,000–$200,000+ for enterprise or Adobe Commerce migrations with complex requirements. The cost is driven by catalogue size, the number of Magento extensions needing replacement, custom functionality, and integration depth. Most mid-market migrations break even within 8–14 months through cost savings and conversion improvements.

Will I lose my SEO rankings migrating from Magento to Shopify?
Not if it's done properly. Shopify's fixed URL structure means your Magento URLs will change, so a complete one-to-one 301 redirect map is essential, along with preserved metadata and structured data. A temporary 20–30% traffic dip right after launch is common, with recovery typically within a few weeks to a couple of months when redirects are clean. Skipping or rushing the redirect work is what causes lasting ranking loss.

Do my Magento extensions transfer to Shopify?
No. Around 90% of Magento extensions have no direct Shopify equivalent — they're built specifically for Magento. Each extension needs to be replaced with a Shopify app (the App Store has over 12,000), rebuilt as custom functionality, or dropped. Auditing your extensions is the first and most important step of scoping a migration, because it determines much of the cost and timeline.

What happens to my customers' passwords when I migrate?
Magento passwords are stored as one-way salted hashes that cannot be migrated or recovered. Every customer will need to reset their password at first login on the new Shopify store. This is handled with a password-reset email campaign at launch — plan the messaging so customers understand it's a routine part of the move, not a security problem.

Should I migrate from Magento to Shopify or Shopify Plus?
Most Magento Open Source merchants (self-hosted, no Adobe license fee) are well served by standard or Advanced Shopify. Shopify Plus makes sense at around $1M+/year revenue, for complex B2B, multi-store operations, or Plus-only features like the 20-million redirect limit useful for very large catalogues. Most Adobe Commerce migrations go to Plus, because those stores tend to have the scale and complexity that justify it.

Is it too late to migrate if I'm still on Magento 1?
No, but it's overdue. Magento 1 has been end-of-life since June 2020, with no security patches or support. Running it is a security and compliance liability. If you're on Magento 1, migration should be a near-term priority — and since you're rebuilding regardless, it's a natural moment to move to a modern, supported platform rather than upgrading to Magento 2.

Base X Tech migrates brands from Magento to Shopify — with a proper extension audit, careful data mapping, preserved SEO, and a tested launch. If you're planning a move off Magento, get in touch and we'll scope it before anyone touches your store.