Magento to Shopify migration checklist: data, redirects and SEO, step by step

This Magento to Shopify migration checklist covers eight phases in order, from the audit to the weeks after launch. The core of it: import products, then customers, then orders; map every old URL to one new URL with 301 redirects before the domain moves; and keep those redirects live long after launch. The rest is testing and a cutover timed for a quiet week.

By Kanika Mathur, Head of Service Delivery

Reviewed by Arjun SareenPublished Sep 30, 2026Updated Sep 30, 202613 min read

Ecommerce

Key takeaways

The short version

Check the deadline first. Adobe's lifecycle table shows standard support for Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 ended on 11 August 2026, and 2.4.4 and 2.4.5 are already in a security-only period Adobe calls migration time (Adobe, 2026).
Import in order: products, customers, orders. That is Shopify's own sequence, and orders link to products by SKU, so products must exist first (Shopify Help Center; Matrixify).
Passwords do not move. Shopify says passwords encrypted outside Shopify cannot be migrated by CSV, and Matrixify notes no platform exports them, so every migrated account needs an invite to set a new password (Shopify Help Center; Matrixify).
Redirects protect rankings. Map each old URL to one final URL with a 301; Google says permanent redirects lose no PageRank and should stay for at least 1 year (Google Search Central).
Know the platform limits. Shopify allows 2,048 variants per product since October 2025, and checkout extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps are Plus only; Plus lists at $2,300 a month on a three-year term (Shopify).

Should you migrate? A decision checklist

Migrate when the cost of keeping Magento current is higher than the cost of the constraints Shopify imposes. Two dates set the clock: Adobe's lifecycle table shows standard support for Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 ended on 11 August 2026, and PHP 8.1, which 2.4.4 to 2.4.6 stores may run on, reached end of life on 31 December 2025 with PCI compliance at risk. Then check that your catalog and checkout fit Shopify's limits.

A migration is a replatform: you swap a stack you host and patch for a hosted platform with fixed rules. If you are still choosing a platform, we set out how the three platforms compare on cost, hosting and flexibility.

1 year

Google's general minimum for keeping redirects in place, so it can transfer all signals to the new URLs.

Google Search Central, 2026

100,000

Maximum URL redirects on a standard Shopify plan. Shopify Plus allows up to 20,000,000.

Shopify Help Center, 2026

2,048

Variants allowed per Shopify product since October 2025, up from the historical limit of 100.

Shopify developer changelog, 2025

Decision matrix: signals for moving, and signals that need design work first (Adobe, Shopify)
Signal	Points toward Shopify	Needs design work first
Magento version	2.4.4, 2.4.5 or 2.4.6, facing another upgrade	2.4.8 or 2.4.9, with years of support left
Hosting and patching	Nobody owns PHP and database upgrades	A platform team already does this well
Catalog shape	Products fit Shopify's variant limit	Products exceed that limit
Checkout	Standard checkout, or Plus customization	Custom checkout logic without a Plus budget
Stores and regions	9 Plus expansion stores cover your regions	Many store views with separate catalogs
URL footprint	URL count within your plan's redirect cap	More URLs than your plan allows

A right-hand row is design work to price first, and rarely a veto. The version row carries the deadline: Adobe calls the security-only period for 2.4.4 to 2.4.6 "migration time, not as a long-term support tier."¹⁰

Where each Adobe Commerce 2.4 release stands on 30 September 2026

Orange is standard support, amber is extended support, blue is the security-only period. The dashed line marks 30 September 2026.

Data behind this chart: Adobe Commerce end of support dates
Release	General availability	End of standard	End of extended	End of security-only
2.4.4	12 Apr 2022	12 Apr 2025	14 Apr 2026	31 May 2027
2.4.5	9 Aug 2022	12 Aug 2025	11 Aug 2026	31 May 2027
2.4.6	14 Mar 2023	11 Aug 2026	31 Aug 2027	31 May 2028
2.4.7	9 Apr 2024	31 May 2027	31 May 2028	N/A
2.4.8	8 Apr 2025	31 May 2028	TBD	N/A
2.4.9	12 May 2026	31 May 2029	TBD	N/A

Source: Adobe Commerce lifecycle policy (updated 18 September 2026). Later dates for 2.4.8 and 2.4.9 are TBD.

The Magento to Shopify migration checklist at a glance

The Magento to Shopify migration checklist has eight phases: audit, store setup, data import, theme and apps, URL mapping and redirects, SEO checks, testing, and cutover with monitoring. Work through them in that order: settings before data, data before redirects, redirects before the domain moves. Each phase ends on a "done when" test, so nobody argues about whether it is finished.

Download the checklist as a CSV to load it into your tracker.

The master checklist, in order (Shopify, Google, Adobe, Matrixify)
Phase	What you do	Done when
1. Audit	Inventory data, URLs, extensions and integrations	Every item has an owner and a destination
2. Store setup	Time zone, currency, locations, shipping, taxes, payments	Settings match Magento before any import
3. Data import	Products, then customers, then orders; dry run first	Counts match the Magento export
4. Theme and apps	Build the theme; replace each extension	Every kept feature has a working equivalent
5. Redirects	Map every old URL to one final URL; import by CSV	Each old URL returns one 301
6. SEO checks	Carry titles, update internal links, check canonicals	No noindex, no chains, no home page dumps
7. Testing	Test orders, account activation, redirects in bulk	Checkout, tax, shipping and email pass
8. Cutover and monitor	Delta import, domain switch in a traffic dip, sitemap	New URLs gain traffic as old ones fall

Pre-migration audit: what to inventory first

The audit lists everything the store does today so nothing disappears by accident: the catalog and its attributes, customer and order volumes, every indexable URL, every extension, and every system that reads or writes store data.

Catalog. Find the configurable products with the most option combinations. Shopify now allows 2,048 variants per product, up from 100, so anything larger needs splitting or a different model.⁷
Custom attributes. List product attributes beyond the defaults. A migration app such as Matrixify moves Magento custom fields into Shopify metafields, but the theme has to be built to display them.¹²
Customers and orders. Record totals and the order history you need. Exporting orders needs database access, not only the Magento admin.¹²
URLs. Export every product, category and CMS URL, plus the rules already stored under Marketing, SEO and Search, URL Rewrites. Magento paths can include a category path and a .html suffix, so one product often has several live URLs.¹¹
Extensions. List every module by what it does for the business; that list becomes the apps plan.
Integrations. ERP, PIM, order management, email, search, tax and shipping, with the direction data flows.
Data quality. Shopify validates more strictly than Magento: a customer email needs a valid domain and a phone number needs a country code and the right length.¹² Find the bad rows now.
Baseline metrics. Save organic landing pages, conversion rate and top revenue URLs to judge the launch against.

Decision rule: if the audit finds products above the variant limit, or checkout logic you cannot live without, design those first and book dates second.

Data migration: products, customers and orders

Import products first, then customers, then historical orders, the order Shopify's Help Center gives so orders connect to both. Products and customers can move by CSV; historical orders need a migration app or the Shopify API. Shopify says customer passwords cannot be migrated by CSV because they are encrypted outside Shopify, so every account needs an invite to set a new password.

Any store that needs its order history needs a migration app or a custom build on the Shopify API, because orders cannot move by CSV.² Matrixify, for example, reads the standard Magento 1 and Magento 2 CSV exports and imports products, categories as collections, customers and orders, with redirects from the old Magento URLs.¹²

How each Magento entity lands in Shopify
Magento	Shopify	How it moves	Watch for
Products and configurable products	Products with variants	CSV or app	Variant limit per product
Categories	Collections	App (as collections)	Collection URLs change format
Custom attributes	Metafields	App	Theme must display them
Customers	Customers	CSV or app	Passwords do not move; strict email and phone checks
Orders	Orders	App or API only	Line items link to products by SKU
CMS pages and blog posts	Pages and blog posts	App template or manual	Export needs database access

Set store settings first. The import reads the store's time zone, order currency and inventory locations, so configure them before any data lands.¹²
Dry run, fix, then import. Convert the export, clean it as a spreadsheet, then import. Edit after conversion, not in raw Magento files, where one change can break links between records.¹²
Keep SKUs stable. Orders attach to products by SKU, which is why products must already exist in Shopify when orders arrive.¹²
Budget import time. Matrixify's guidance is that importing 100,000 orders and customers can take a day or two, because Shopify's API call limit applies to every store.¹² Rehearse on a test store to learn your real number.
Plan account activation. Shopify's customer import guide says imported customers must be invited to create new passwords. Send Shopify's account activation emails in bulk, or export activation links and send them from your email platform with your own copy.¹²

URL mapping and 301 redirects

Build a spreadsheet with one row for every indexable Magento URL and the single Shopify URL it should land on, then import it as 301 redirects before the domain moves. Google recommends permanent redirects such as 301, straight to the final destination, kept for at least a year. Shopify allows 100,000 redirects on standard plans and 20,000,000 on Plus, and a redirect only fires when the old path returns a 404.

The map carries the links and rankings the old URLs earned. Google says 301 and other permanent redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank.⁹

A laptop showing a blurred two-column spreadsheet of short rows on a wooden desk beside a printed sheet of blurred lines with a pencil, a black mug and a plain cardboard box under a small lamp, no people — The redirect map is a spreadsheet job: one old URL, one new URL, one row at a time.

Shopify product URLs take the form /products/handle and collections /collections/handle, the formats in Shopify's own redirect examples.³ Magento URLs can carry a category path and a .html suffix.¹¹ So one product may need a row for its bare URL and one for each category path. A migration app such as Matrixify generates product redirect rows; you still own category, CMS page, blog post and filter URLs. Download the redirect-mapping template to start, then delete the example rows and the Page type and Note columns before you import it.

Redirect-mapping template (Shopify's sample redirect CSV uses the first two columns)
Redirect from	Redirect to	Page type	Note
/gear/bags/overnight-duffle.html	/products/overnight-duffle	Product with category path	One row per category path
/overnight-duffle.html	/products/overnight-duffle	Product, bare URL	Same target as above
/gear/bags.html	/collections/bags	Category	Check collection handle
/about-us	/pages/about-us	CMS page	Not generated by product imports
/discontinued-tent.html	/collections/tents	Retired product	Closest relevant page, never the home page

Rules for a clean map:

One hop. Point every old URL at its final destination. Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops, but Google advises redirecting straight to the final URL, and if that is not possible, ideally no more than 3 hops.⁹ Flatten old Magento rewrites into the new map.
No mass redirects to the home page. Google may treat that as a soft 404. If a page has no equivalent, return a 404 or 410.⁹
Mind Shopify's rules. Redirects work only from broken URLs, query-string URLs such as layered navigation filters may not redirect as expected, and reserved paths such as /cart and /collections/all cannot be redirected.³
Import by CSV. Shopify's sample redirect CSV uses two columns, Redirect from and Redirect to.³ Check it for duplicates and loops first.
Count first. If the map runs past your plan's cap, trim low-value filter URLs or budget for Plus.

SEO preservation: will you lose rankings?

Shopify migration SEO comes down to the redirects. If they are right, expect temporary movement: Google says rankings fluctuate during a site move and that a medium-sized site can take a few weeks or more before the new URLs replace the old ones in results, longer for large sites. Lasting losses come from controllable mistakes: missing redirects, chains, redirects to irrelevant pages, noindex rules left on, and canonical tags pointing at old URLs.

Carry the on-page signals. Move titles, meta descriptions and copy as they are. Rewrite later, or you cannot tell a content effect from a migration effect.
Update internal links. Replace old URLs in navigation, content and emails using the same mapping, so users and crawlers do not route through redirects.⁹
Check canonicals and noindex. Once redirects are live, canonical tags should use the new URLs, and any noindex rules added during the build must come off.⁹ A store left in private mode is invisible to search engines.¹
Submit the sitemap. Shopify generates sitemap.xml automatically with products, pages, collections and blog posts; submit it in Search Console.⁴
Test redirects at scale. Use the URL Inspection Tool for single URLs and a script for the full list; every row should return one 301, then a 200.⁹

Traffic on old URLs should fall as the new ones rise.⁹ If a page drops and stays down after a few weeks, check its redirect, then its canonical, then its content.

Apps, integrations and checkout

Magento extensions do not come across. Each one is replaced by a native Shopify feature, an app from the Shopify App Store, or a custom app, and integrations with ERP, PIM or order management are rebuilt against the Shopify API. Checkout is the tightest constraint: extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps are available only on Shopify Plus, and custom commerce logic runs through Shopify Functions.

Sort each line of the audit's extension list into one of four buckets:

Native. Shopify already does it.
App. A maintained app covers it. Shopify warns that apps still on older product APIs may break on products with more than 100 variants, so check.⁷
Custom app. Rules that are yours alone, such as pricing, bundling or B2B terms, which Shopify Functions carries on Plus.⁵
Drop. Features nobody uses, which the analytics will show.

For checkout, read the constraint first. Shopify no longer supports checkout.liquid for those steps, so customization goes through Plus-only extensions.⁸ If your checkout carries custom fields, delivery logic or payment rules, treat the project as a Shopify Plus migration and price Plus and the extension work together. Integrations need the same discipline: rebuild each data flow against the API and test it at real order volume, since Shopify rate-limits its APIs and each app gets its own bucket of calls, so a sync job can hit throttle errors just as an import does. Keep the app count low from the start; we cover choosing and stacking apps without slowing the store separately.

Testing and launch

Rehearse the whole migration on a test store, then launch with a delta import and a domain switch timed for a recurring traffic dip, which is when Google advises moving. Shopify's checklist includes test orders and setting up shipping, taxes, payments and the domain before go-live. Keep Magento's data available until the numbers settle.

Pre-launch checks, run on the test store first:

Place test orders for each payment method, shipping zone and tax case, then refund them.¹
Activate a migrated customer account and check past orders appear.
Run the full redirect list through a script and fix every row that does not return one 301 to a live page.
Check templates on real phones, including metafields, variants and out-of-stock states.
Confirm an order reaches the ERP and stock updates flow back.

Then choose a cutover model; Matrixify describes two.¹² With downtime, you close the store and migrate everything at once, which is cleanest for data but can take a few days. Without downtime, you migrate in bulk while Magento trades, switch traffic, then import whatever changed since the first pass. We usually recommend the second for a trading store, with catalog edits frozen for the final days to keep the delta small.

On launch day, point the domain, remove any storefront password, submit the sitemap and watch 404 reports and checkout completion hourly. Set redirects up before you transfer the domain, as Shopify advises, so they are live when traffic arrives.¹

Timeline and cost

Shopify's Plus migration page advertises a move in "90 days or less"; treat that as the vendor's own target and set yours from the audit. The audit and redirect map, the theme and app rebuild, and the integrations take most of the time. On cost, Shopify charges no migration fee, and Plus lists at $2,300 a month on a three-year term or $2,500 on a one-year term.

A small store spends most of its calendar on data cleanup and the redirect map; a complex one with custom checkout, ERP sync and several store views spends it on rebuild and integration testing, which is how build phases stretch when scope moves.

What sets the length of each phase, and where a duration is published
Phase	What drives duration	Published reference point
Audit and mapping	Number of URLs, extensions and integrations	No published figure
Theme and apps	Custom features you keep; checkout changes	No published figure
Data import	Record volume and Shopify's API call limit	100,000 orders and customers can take a day or two (Matrixify)
Cutover	Downtime or delta approach	A downtime cutover can take a few days (Matrixify)
Search settling	Site size and crawl speed	A few weeks or more for a medium site (Google)
Redirect upkeep	Time for Google to transfer signals	At least 1 year (Google)

Shopify does not charge to migrate and says migration is the merchant's responsibility.⁶ At those list prices, Plus costs $27,600 to $30,000 a year before any variable platform fee, which depends on revenue and business model.⁵

Cost lines to budget, with what is published and what depends on scope
Cost line	Published figure	What moves it
Shopify Plus subscription	$2,300 a month (3-year term) or $2,500 (1-year term)	Possible variable platform fee on revenue
Migration fee from Shopify	None; paid services optional	Custom needs
Data migration app	Varies by app; Matrixify prices by data volume per import	Catalog, customer and order counts
Theme, apps and integrations	No published figure	Custom features, checkout work, data flows
Parallel Magento running	Your current hosting cost	Length of the delta and rollback window

Build lines depend on how much custom behaviour you keep, so get them quoted against the audit and decide early whether the work suits a fixed scope or an open one. If you want the audit, the redirect map and the cutover plan built for your store, our ecommerce development team runs Magento to Shopify migrations end to end, drawing on 600+ projects since 2017.

Frequently asked

Magento to Shopify migration questions

How do I migrate from Magento to Shopify?

Start with an audit of products, customers, orders, URLs, extensions and integrations. Set up the Shopify store settings, then import products first, customers second and historical orders last, which is the order Shopify recommends so records link correctly. Products and customers can move by CSV; orders need a migration app such as Matrixify or the Shopify API. Rebuild the theme and apps, import 301 redirects for every old URL, test on a rehearsal store, then switch the domain.

Will I lose SEO when moving to Shopify?

Not if the redirects are right. Google says 301 and other permanent redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank, but rankings can fluctuate temporarily and a medium-sized site can take a few weeks or more before new URLs replace the old ones. Lasting losses come from missing redirects, redirect chains, sending old pages to the home page, leftover noindex rules and canonical tags that still point at old URLs. Keep redirects for at least a year.

How long does a Magento to Shopify migration take?

Shopify's Plus migration page advertises a move in "90 days or less", but your audit sets the real calendar: the redirect map, the theme and app rebuild, and the integrations take most of the time. The data import is measured in days; Matrixify says importing 100,000 orders and customers can take a day or two because of Shopify's API call limit. After launch, Google says a medium-sized site can take a few weeks or more to settle in search.

Can customer passwords be migrated from Magento to Shopify?

No. Shopify's Help Center says passwords are encrypted outside Shopify, so they cannot be migrated from another store by CSV, and Matrixify notes that no platform allows exporting them. Migrated accounts arrive inactive. You can have Shopify send account activation emails in bulk, or export activation links and send them from your own email platform. Write and test that email on the rehearsal store, and warn your support team before launch.

Do I need Shopify Plus to migrate from Magento?

Not always. Standard plans allow up to 100,000 URL redirects and products with up to 2,048 variants. A Shopify Plus migration makes sense if you must customize the information, shipping or payment steps of checkout, which Shopify limits to Plus stores, if you need more redirects than that (Plus allows 20,000,000), or if you want expansion stores for regions or separate locations. Shopify lists Plus at $2,300 a month on a three-year term or $2,500 on a one-year term.

What is the safest way to move our store from Magento to Shopify?

Rehearse the full migration on a test store first, including imports, account activation, test orders and a scripted check of every redirect. Then migrate the bulk of the data while Magento keeps trading, switch the domain during a recurring traffic dip with redirects already live, and import whatever changed since the first pass. Keep Magento data available until the numbers settle. Our ecommerce development team runs this sequence end to end.

Kanika Mathur

Head of Service Delivery, Resourcifi

Kanika Mathur is Head of Service Delivery at Resourcifi. She leads the engineering pods that scope, build and run client software, from mobile apps to AI systems, and she reviews the process and figures in our engineering guides for accuracy.

Resourcifi on LinkedIn →

Arjun Sareen

Reviewer. Head of Business Development, Resourcifi

Arjun Sareen is Head of Business Development at Resourcifi. He scopes builds with founders and product leaders, matches each project with the right team model, and hears the same buying questions every week, which is what he writes about.

Resourcifi on LinkedIn →

Sources

Shopify Help Center, Migrating to Shopify (Import products first, then customers, then historical orders; checklist includes shipping, taxes, payment provider, test orders, domain and SEO; set up redirects before transferring the domain; private mode blocks search engines).
Shopify Help Center, Transferring data to Shopify (Five transfer methods (copy, CSV, apps, Partner, API); product and customer CSV import; historical orders via apps or API; the customer import guide (help.shopify.com/en/manual/customers/import-export-customers, linked inline) says passwords encrypted outside Shopify cannot be migrated by CSV and imported customers must be invited to create new passwords).
Shopify Help Center, URL redirects (Redirect only from broken URLs; 100,000 redirects on standard plans and 20,000,000 on Plus; Redirect from and Redirect to field labels and a sample redirect CSV with those two columns; query strings may not work; reserved paths; /products/ and /collections/ path formats).
Shopify Help Center, Finding and submitting your sitemap (sitemap.xml generated automatically with products, pages, collections and blog posts; submit in Google Search Console).
Shopify Help Center, Shopify Plus plan (Plus at $2,300 a month on a three-year term or $2,500 on a one-year term; possible variable platform fee; checkout customization; Shopify Functions; 9 expansion stores).
Shopify, Shopify Plus pricing (Shopify does not charge to migrate; paid services available for custom needs; migration is the merchant's responsibility; the Plus migration page (shopify.com/plus/migration, linked inline) advertises migrating in 90 days or less).
Shopify developer changelog, The product variant limit is now 2048 for all merchants (2,048 variants per product from 15 October 2025, up from 100; apps on older product APIs may break above 100 variants).
Shopify developer docs, Checkout UI extensions (Checkout UI extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps are Plus only (the checkout.liquid statement is linked inline to shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/checkout); Shopify API limits (shopify.dev/docs/api/usage/limits, linked inline): most APIs are rate-limited and each app has its own bucket).
Google Search Central, Site moves with URL changes (URL mapping; 301 or 308 permanent redirects; no PageRank loss; chains ideally no more than 3 hops; no mass redirects to the home page; 404 or 410 for dropped pages; canonical and noindex checks; test redirects; move during traffic dips; a few weeks or more to settle; keep redirects at least 1 year).
Adobe Experience League, Adobe Commerce lifecycle policy (Three-year standard support; end of support dates for 2.4.4 to 2.4.9; security-only period as migration time; PHP 8.1 end of life 31 December 2025 with PCI risk).
Adobe Experience League, Product URL rewrites (Magento request paths can include a category path and a .html suffix; URL Rewrites under Marketing, SEO and Search).
Matrixify, Migrate from Magento to Shopify (Reads Magento 1 and 2 exports; custom fields to metafields; orders need database access; stricter email and phone validation; 100,000 orders and customers can take a day or two; orders link by SKU; downtime and delta cutovers; passwords cannot be exported; store settings first; test store; Matrixify pricing by data volume; pages and blog posts need a Matrixify template and database export; edit only after conversion).