Why Magento stores move to Shopify
Magento was built for developers, and that shows on the invoice. A Magento 2 or Adobe Commerce store needs its own hosting, regular security patches, version upgrades that are projects in their own right, and a developer on call for changes that would be a settings toggle elsewhere. Magento 1 stores have been out of support since June 2020 and every month on one is a month of unpatched risk.
Shopify takes hosting, security and upgrades off your plate entirely. You pay for the platform and the apps you actually use, and the developer budget goes into growth instead of keeping the lights on. For most UK retailers who are not running a genuinely unusual catalogue, that trade is an easy one. The work is in making the move without losing what made Magento worth having.
Attribute sets and configurable products
Magento's catalogue model is richer than Shopify's, and pretending otherwise is how Magento migrations go wrong. A blunt export and import turns a carefully structured catalogue into a pile of products with everything stuffed into the description. We do not do that.
- Attribute sets become Shopify product types with a matching set of metafield definitions, so a garden bench still has a material, a seat width and a care guide as separate, filterable fields.
- Configurable products become Shopify products with variants. Shopify allows three options per product, which covers most configurables. Where one of yours has more, we restructure it deliberately rather than letting an import tool guess.
- Bundle and grouped products are rebuilt using Shopify's Bundles feature or an app, depending on whether the customer chooses the components.
- Custom options become variants or line item properties, depending on whether they affect stock.
- Layered navigation is recreated with Shopify's search and filtering, driven by the metafields we have just mapped.
- Related, upsell and cross-sell links are carried across into metafields so the merchandising survives.
The mapping is written down and agreed with you before any data moves, then tested on a sample before the full import.
B2B and trade customers
A lot of Magento stores run a trade side: customer groups, tiered pricing, payment on account, quotes, minimum order quantities. Shopify now handles this natively through company accounts, price lists, payment terms and quick ordering, with the full feature set on Shopify Plus and good app options on standard plans.
We look at what your trade customers actually use rather than what Magento technically offered, and we build the B2B side to match. Our checkout and payments service covers the detail, including wholesale and payment terms.
Customer accounts and passwords
Magento stores its passwords as hashes that Shopify cannot read, so they cannot be migrated. No platform can do this, whatever an import tool claims. What moves is everything else: names, emails, addresses, customer groups, tags and the complete order history attached to each account.
The good news is that Shopify customer accounts can now sign in with a one-time code sent by email, with no password at all. For most stores that is the cleanest answer: customers turn up, enter their email, and they are in, with their order history waiting. Where you need classic password accounts, we send a clear invite instead. Either way the message is written with you, and we time it so support is ready.
Large catalogues
Tens of thousands of SKUs and the images that go with them are not a problem for Shopify, but they are a problem for a careless import. We migrate in stages through the API: products first, then images, then stock, then customers and orders, checking counts at every stage and opening products at random to catch broken variants and missing fields.
Stock levels are taken from whatever is the source of truth, which for a Magento store is usually the ERP rather than Magento itself. A final delta import on launch day picks up everything that changed during the build.
Integrations and extensions
Magento stores accumulate extensions and integrations: the ERP, the warehouse, Sage or Xero, couriers, marketplaces, a product information system, an EPOS till in the shop. Every one goes on a list in the audit with its Shopify replacement next to it, whether that is an app, a native feature or a custom integration built by our apps and integrations team. Nothing gets switched off until its replacement has been tested.
Redirects and search rankings
Magento URLs come with their own quirks: URL keys, .html suffixes, category paths baked into product addresses and layered navigation pages full of parameters. We crawl the old site, pull everything with traffic from Search Console, and map each address to its Shopify equivalent. Redirects are imported and tested before launch. Page titles, descriptions and canonical rules come across too, so the years of search equity attached to your catalogue survive the move.
Who this is for
Established UK retailers on Magento 1, Magento 2 or Adobe Commerce with a catalogue, a trade customer base and rankings worth protecting, who are tired of paying to stand still. The audit at the start tells you exactly what comes across and what it costs, before anything is touched. See our pricing page for how we quote.
Questions we get asked
Can Shopify handle a catalogue the size of ours?
Almost certainly. Shopify runs stores with very large catalogues every day. The practical questions are about structure rather than size: how your attribute sets become metafields, how configurable products become variants, and how your filters and search are rebuilt. We answer those in the audit with your actual data, not in the abstract.
Will our trade customers still see their prices?
Yes, if we plan for it. Magento customer groups and tiered pricing map to Shopify B2B company accounts and price lists on Shopify Plus, or to a wholesale app on a standard plan. Which route is right depends on how much of the B2B feature set you actually use, and we will tell you plainly which plan you need rather than defaulting to the expensive one.
Do customers need to set new passwords?
Magento password hashes cannot be imported into Shopify, so yes, in one form or another. The gentlest route is Shopify customer accounts that sign in with a code sent by email, which needs no password at all. Customer records, addresses, groups and order history come across either way. We write the launch email with you so nobody thinks they have been hacked.
We are still on Magento 1. Is that a problem?
It is a reason to move sooner, not a barrier. Magento 1 has been out of support since June 2020, which means no security patches. The migration process is the same as for Magento 2: we work from your database and API exports, and the audit tells us exactly what is there.
How long does a Magento to Shopify migration take?
Longer than a simple platform swap, because Magento stores tend to carry a large catalogue, custom extensions and an ERP or EPOS behind them. The audit is where we find out how much of that applies to you. You get a fixed quote and a date together, and your Magento store trades normally until the switch.