Shopify Plus Migration Checklist
A Shopify Plus migration is one of the highest-stakes projects an e-commerce team runs. You are moving product data, customer accounts, order history, SEO equity and dozens of business rules from one platform to another, usually while the store keeps trading. Done well, the switch is invisible to shoppers and the new store is faster and cheaper to run. Done badly, you lose rankings, break integrations and spend months firefighting.
This checklist is the one we use when planning moves to Shopify Plus, whether a merchant is coming from Magento (Adobe Commerce), WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud or a custom build, or is simply upgrading from a standard Shopify plan. It is organized by phase so you can turn it straight into a project plan. If you are still deciding on a platform, read our comparison of Shopify vs WooCommerce first.
Is Shopify Plus the Right Move?
Shopify Plus is Shopify’s enterprise plan. Pricing starts at a few thousand dollars per month, with a revenue-based component for larger merchants, so check the current terms on the official Shopify Plus site. In return you get capabilities that matter at scale:
- Checkout customization through checkout extensibility (checkout UI extensions and Shopify Functions for discounts, payment and delivery logic).
- Native B2B features such as company accounts, catalogs with customer-specific pricing and payment terms.
- Expansion stores for separate regions or brands, managed from one organization.
- Higher API rate limits and access to Plus-only APIs, useful for heavy ERP and PIM integrations.
- Automation and scheduling tools such as Launchpad for timed sales and theme changes.
If you are paying heavily for hosting, security patches and extension conflicts on a self-hosted platform, or your standard Shopify store has outgrown its checkout and wholesale options, Plus usually pays for itself. If your main problem is weak merchandising or slow product development, a platform change alone will not fix it.
Phase 1: Discovery and Planning
- Inventory every feature the current store uses. List extensions, custom code, cron jobs and manual workarounds. Teams routinely forget a small script that sends a daily stock file to a warehouse.
- Map each feature to a Shopify equivalent: native feature, Shopify app, Shopify Function, custom app or “retire it”. Anything in the last two columns needs an owner and an estimate.
- Document integrations. ERP, WMS, PIM, CRM, ESP, tax engine, reviews, loyalty, search and analytics. Note the direction of data flow and the frequency.
- Benchmark today’s performance. Record conversion rate, average order value, organic sessions by landing page, Core Web Vitals and top-ranking keywords. You need a baseline to prove the migration worked.
- Pick a launch window away from peak trading. Most retailers avoid the eight weeks before Black Friday and their own seasonal peaks.
Phase 2: Data Migration
Data is where most of the effort sits. Shopify’s data model is simpler than Magento’s or Salesforce’s, so you will need to make deliberate mapping decisions rather than copy tables across.
| Data type | What to check | Common approach |
|---|---|---|
| Products and variants | Option structure, variant limits, configurable and bundled products | Restructure into products, variants and metafields; use bundles or apps for kits |
| Product attributes | Custom fields used for filtering or specs | Metafields and metaobjects with defined types |
| Categories | Nested trees and layered navigation | Collections (manual or automated) plus Search & Discovery filters |
| Customers | Passwords, addresses, tags, marketing consent | Import profiles and consent; passwords cannot be moved, so plan an account invitation flow |
| Orders | How much history support and customers need | Import historical orders via API or a tool such as Matrixify, or archive older orders in your ERP |
| Gift cards and store credit | Outstanding balances | Recreate balances on the new platform and reconcile totals |
| Content | CMS pages, blog posts, images | Pages, blog articles and Files, with image URLs rewritten |
Run a trial migration early, then again after fixing mapping issues, and do a final delta import (new customers and orders since the last run) on cutover day. Reconcile counts and totals each time: number of active products, customers with marketing consent, and gift card balance totals should match the source.
Phase 3: SEO Protection
Shopify enforces fixed URL patterns such as /products/, /collections/, /pages/ and /blogs/. Almost every Shopify Plus migration from another platform therefore changes URLs, and redirects are what protect your rankings.
- Crawl the old site and export every indexable URL, plus URLs with backlinks and organic traffic from your analytics.
- Build a one-to-one redirect map to the closest new page. Avoid sending everything to the home page.
- Import redirects through Shopify’s URL redirect CSV import (see the Shopify Help Center) and test a sample after launch.
- Carry over title tags, meta descriptions, alt text and structured data.
- Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console, following Google Search Central guidance on site moves, on launch day and monitor coverage reports daily for two weeks.
Our website redesign SEO checklist goes deeper on redirect mapping and post-launch monitoring.
Phase 4: Theme, Checkout and Custom Logic
Theme
Choose between a premium Online Store 2.0 theme customized to your brand, a fully custom theme, or a headless front end. Custom themes built on sections and blocks give merchandisers control without developer help. Headless only makes sense for specific needs; see our guide to headless Shopify with Next.js before committing.
Checkout
Shopify has moved Plus merchants away from editing checkout.liquid to checkout extensibility, documented on Shopify.dev. Upsells, custom fields, trust badges and delivery messaging are now built as checkout UI extensions, and discount, shipping and payment rules as Shopify Functions. The older Shopify Scripts approach is deprecated, so any logic you are porting should be rebuilt as Functions rather than Scripts.
Apps and custom apps
Keep the app list short. Every app adds script weight, monthly cost and another vendor to manage. Where an app would do one small job, a lightweight custom app is often cheaper over three years.
Phase 5: Integrations
Rebuild or reconnect each integration, then test it with realistic volumes. Watch for:
- Inventory sync between Shopify locations and your ERP or WMS, including how often stock levels update during a flash sale.
- Order export to fulfilment, including split shipments, partial refunds and exchanges.
- Tax and duties configuration for every market you sell in.
- Marketing data: customer events, consent status and product feeds for your email platform and ad channels.
Use webhooks and bulk operations rather than frequent polling, and log every failed sync so the operations team can see problems before customers do.
Phase 6: Testing and Go-Live
- User acceptance testing with real staff running real scenarios: discount stacking, returns, B2B orders, international checkout.
- Payment tests for every gateway and method, including refunds.
- Performance checks on mobile for home, collection, product and cart pages.
- Content freeze on the old platform 24–48 hours before cutover.
- Final delta import, DNS switch, SSL check and redirect spot checks.
- Customer account invitations sent in batches, with a clear message explaining why customers need to set a new password.
- Hypercare for two to four weeks: daily checks on orders, sync logs, Search Console and conversion rate.
Typical Timeline and Cost
As an indicative guide, an upgrade from standard Shopify to Plus with checkout and B2B work takes 4–8 weeks and costs roughly $10,000–$30,000. A replatform from WooCommerce or BigCommerce with a custom theme and a handful of integrations typically takes 10–16 weeks and $30,000–$80,000. Complex Magento or Salesforce migrations with ERP integration, multiple storefronts and large order histories often run 4–6 months and $80,000–$200,000+. Your final quote depends on catalog complexity, integrations and design scope, plus the Shopify Plus subscription and app fees.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will I lose SEO rankings when migrating to Shopify Plus?
A short dip of a few weeks is common while search engines process redirects. With a complete redirect map, preserved metadata and a fast new theme, most stores recover and often improve. Rankings drop permanently when redirects are missing or content is thinned out.
Can customer passwords be migrated to Shopify?
No. Passwords are stored as one-way hashes and cannot be imported. Customers are imported without passwords and invited to activate their accounts, or they can sign in with Shopify’s passwordless customer accounts if you enable them.
How long does a Shopify Plus migration take?
From 4 weeks for an upgrade within Shopify to around 6 months for a complex enterprise replatform. Integrations and data cleanup usually set the pace, not the theme.
Do I need to replace my Shopify Scripts?
Yes. Shopify has deprecated Scripts in favor of Shopify Functions, which run inside the checkout with better performance and work with checkout extensibility. Rebuild discount, shipping and payment customizations as Functions.
Plan Your Migration with Sigmato
Sigmato’s Shopify development team handles data mapping, custom themes, checkout extensions and ERP integrations, so your store moves without losing orders or rankings. If you are launching a new store rather than migrating, see our Shopify store development guide.
Sources and References
