Magento to Shopify Migration: The Complete Checklist (2026)

Why brands move from Magento to Shopify

• Lower total cost of ownership - no servers, patches or upgrade projects to manage
• Faster time to market - launch features with apps instead of custom builds
• Better performance and uptime - global CDN and built-in scalability for peak sales
• Easier for marketing teams - edit content with the Online Store 2.0 theme editor

Phase 1: Discovery and planning

1. List every Magento feature, extension and integration you use today.
2. Decide which features become Shopify apps, custom apps or process changes.
3. Choose Shopify or Shopify Plus based on volume, B2B needs and checkout requirements.
4. Agree a launch date away from your peak trading periods.
5. Benchmark current traffic, rankings and conversion rate in Google Search Console and analytics.

Phase 2: Data migration

• Products - SKUs, variants, options, images, metafields and inventory
• Customers - names, addresses, tags and marketing consent
• Orders - historical orders for reporting and customer service
• Content - CMS pages, blog posts and policies
• Reviews - export and import into your Shopify reviews app

Run at least one full test migration and a delta migration just before launch to catch new orders and customers.

Phase 3: Design and theme development

Use the migration as a chance to improve UX rather than copy your old store. Build on an Online Store 2.0 theme with reusable sections so your team can create landing pages without developers. Our Shopify theme development team builds fast, conversion-focused themes.

Phase 4: Apps and integrations

Map Magento extensions to Shopify apps for search, filtering, reviews, subscriptions, loyalty and email. Plan integrations with your ERP, inventory, 3PL and accounting systems - see our Shopify integration services.

Phase 5: SEO migration

This is where most migrations go wrong. Protect your rankings with:

1. A complete URL map from every Magento URL to its Shopify equivalent
2. 301 redirects uploaded to Shopify (including product, category and CMS URLs)
3. Migrated page titles, meta descriptions and alt text
4. Structured data for products, reviews and breadcrumbs
5. An updated XML sitemap submitted to Google Search Console
6. Daily monitoring of crawl errors, rankings and traffic for the first weeks

Our ecommerce SEO migration service handles this end to end.

Phase 6: Testing and launch

• Test checkout, taxes, shipping rates and discount codes
• Test on mobile, tablet and desktop across major browsers
• Check speed and Core Web Vitals on key templates
• Place real test orders and refunds
• Switch DNS during a low-traffic window and monitor closely

After launch

Monitor Search Console, fix any 404s, re-engage customers with an account activation email and start conversion optimization once traffic stabilizes. Need help? Explore our Shopify migration services.