How to Migrate Between Ecommerce Platforms
When Migration Makes Sense
Platform migration is expensive in time, money, and risk. Before committing, make sure your reasons justify the cost. Valid reasons to migrate include outgrowing your current platform's capabilities (you need features it does not support), unsustainable costs (platform fees are consuming too large a percentage of revenue), poor performance (slow page loads that hurt conversion rates despite optimization attempts), and platform end-of-life (your current platform is shutting down or no longer receiving updates).
Invalid reasons to migrate include grass-is-greener thinking (another platform looks better in marketing materials), minor annoyances (every platform has quirks), and chasing lower prices without calculating total cost. If your current platform works reasonably well, improving it through better apps, a new theme, or optimization is almost always cheaper and less risky than migrating.
Migration Steps
Before moving anything, document everything that exists on your current platform. Export a complete list of every product with its title, description, price, images, variants, SKU, and URL. Export your customer list with email addresses, order history, and any saved addresses. Document every page on your site: product pages, collection or category pages, blog posts, static pages (about, contact, FAQ, policies), and any custom landing pages. Use a tool like Screaming Frog or a free crawler to generate a complete list of every URL on your current site. This URL list becomes the foundation for your redirect mapping. Miss a URL, and that page returns a 404 error after migration, costing you both the SEO value of that page and the experience of anyone who clicks an old link.
Every ecommerce platform provides CSV export for products, customers, and orders. Export these files and store them safely. Download all product images at full resolution, because CSV exports typically include image URLs but not the image files themselves. If your images are hosted on the platform's CDN, they will become inaccessible after you cancel your subscription. Export your blog content if you have one. Most platforms let you export blog posts as XML or CSV. If not, copy the content manually for each post. Export any custom code, theme modifications, or email templates you want to replicate on the new platform. Back up everything twice. Store one copy locally and one in cloud storage. Once you cancel your old platform subscription, access to your data may be lost permanently.
Create your account on the new platform and configure the foundational elements before importing data. Choose and install your theme, customizing it to match your brand's colors, fonts, and layout. Set up your payment processor and verify it works with a test transaction. Configure shipping zones, rates, and carriers. Set up tax rules for your selling regions. Create your static pages (about, contact, FAQ, shipping policy, return policy, privacy policy, terms of service). Do not import products yet. Get the store structure right first. Product import is easier when your categories, collections, and navigation are already configured.
Start with products. Most platforms accept CSV import with fields mapped to their product data structure. The field names differ between platforms (Shopify uses "Handle" where WooCommerce uses "slug," for example), so you will need to reformat your CSV columns to match the new platform's import template. Download the new platform's sample import CSV and use it as your guide. Import customers next. Customer email addresses, names, and addresses migrate through CSV import on most platforms. Customer passwords cannot be migrated because they are stored as encrypted hashes that differ between platforms. After migration, customers will need to reset their passwords on their first login. Send a notification email explaining this before you go live. Order history import is optional but valuable. Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce all support order history import. Having past orders available in the new platform lets your support team reference order history and lets customers see their past purchases when they log in. After import, spot-check at least 20% of your products. Verify that images loaded correctly, prices are accurate, variants are configured properly, and inventory counts are right. Automated imports occasionally mismap fields or drop data, and catching errors now prevents customer-facing problems later.
This is the most critical step for SEO preservation. Every URL on your old site that has search engine rankings, backlinks, or bookmarked traffic needs a 301 redirect to the corresponding page on the new site. A 301 redirect tells search engines that the page has permanently moved and transfers the SEO value to the new URL. Create a redirect mapping spreadsheet with two columns: old URL and new URL. Map every product page, every category or collection page, every blog post, and every static page. If your old platform used /products/blue-widget and your new platform uses /shop/blue-widget, the redirect sends /products/blue-widget to /shop/blue-widget. On Shopify, upload redirects through Settings > Navigation > URL Redirects (supports CSV upload for bulk redirects). On BigCommerce, use 301 Redirects in the admin panel. On WooCommerce, use the Redirection plugin (free) for bulk redirect management. On your web server, you can also use .htaccess rules for Apache or nginx configuration for redirect management. Test every redirect after setup. A redirect that points to the wrong page or returns an error damages your SEO instead of preserving it. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your old URL list and verify each redirect resolves to a 200 status code on the new platform.
Run through your entire customer journey on the new platform before switching your domain. Place test orders using every payment method you support. Verify that order confirmation emails send correctly with the right content. Test the checkout on mobile devices (iPhone and Android). Test the checkout as a guest and as a logged-in customer. Apply a discount code and verify the calculation. Test shipping rate display for different delivery addresses. Check your entire product catalog for formatting issues: missing images, broken descriptions, incorrect pricing, and missing variants. Check your navigation menu on desktop and mobile. Verify that internal links point to correct pages on the new platform, not to the old platform's URLs. Ask two or three people who are not familiar with the migration to browse the new store and attempt to purchase. Fresh eyes catch issues that you overlook because you know how the store is supposed to work.
When testing is complete and you are confident the new store is ready, update your domain's DNS records to point to the new platform. DNS propagation takes 15 minutes to 48 hours depending on your registrar and the DNS configuration. During propagation, some visitors will see the old store and some will see the new one. To minimize disruption, switch DNS during a low-traffic period (typically late evening or early morning on a weekday). Put a maintenance notice on the old store during the transition. Monitor your new store closely for the first 48 hours: check for 404 errors in Google Search Console, monitor payment processing for failed transactions, and watch your email for customer complaints about broken pages or checkout issues. Submit your updated XML sitemap to Google Search Console immediately after going live. This prompts Google to crawl your new URLs and discover the redirects. Check Search Console daily for the first two weeks to catch and fix any crawl errors.
Migration Tools and Services
For stores with hundreds or thousands of products, manual migration is impractical. Migration services automate the data transfer between platforms.
Cart2Cart ($29 base fee plus per-item pricing) automates product, customer, and order migration between most major platforms. LitExtension ($29 to $79 base fee plus per-item pricing) offers similar automated migration with a broader platform selection. Both services handle data mapping, image transfer, and basic redirect setup.
These services do not handle theme migration (you need a new theme on the new platform), app reconfiguration (you need to set up equivalent apps on the new platform), or custom code (any custom functionality needs to be rebuilt). They transfer data, not design or functionality.
Timeline Expectations
Small store (under 100 products): Two to three weeks. One week for setup and data migration, one week for testing, a few days for DNS switch and monitoring.
Mid-sized store (100 to 1,000 products): Three to five weeks. More time for data migration, redirect mapping, and testing across a larger catalog.
Large store (over 1,000 products): Five to eight weeks. Complex data migration, extensive redirect mapping, thorough testing, and potential custom development for features that do not have equivalent apps on the new platform.
Do not rush a migration. A botched migration that loses SEO rankings or breaks the customer experience costs far more than an extra week of careful preparation.