Up until a few years ago, Shopify wasn’t seen as one of the heavy hitters of ecommerce platforms. Instead, it was a platform largely favoured by smaller brands with less complex needs, whereas other platforms like Adobe Commerce (Magento) or BigCommerce were seen as better suited to larger, enterprise-sized operations.
More recently, this assumption has been fully flipped on its head. Today, Shopify – with its tools for small businesses, as well as enterprise/wholesale/B2B operations – has quickly become an ecommerce leader for stores of all sizes and levels of complexity.
With native B2B tools, Shopify Markets, Shopify Flow, Shopify Functions, customizable checkout, and a massive app ecosystem, the platform is more powerful, more flexible, and easier for internal teams to manage than ever before.
This is why more and more brands are migrating from Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus. Done well, a replatforming to Shopify can simplify your business and create a stronger foundation for growth. Done badly, it can lead to broken redirects, missing data, frustrated customers, and a nightmare launch week.
In this blog, we’ll walk through the key migration steps small to mid-sized ecommerce businesses need to plan for, from auditing your Magento store to mapping data, preserving SEO, rebuilding Shopify workflows, testing everything, and knowing when to bring in an experienced agency partner.
Why Brands Migrate from Magento to Shopify
Generally, most migrations occur because Adobe Commerce becomes expensive, complex, or slow to evolve, while Shopify has continued to improve its feature set and become one of the easiest platforms to use and customize for building your store. Shopify Plus tends to win on:
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Faster time to market
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Lower total cost of ownership
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Simpler day-to-day operations
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Strong native features
Secondly, the capabilities that usually drive the switch include:
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Native B2B (companies, catalogues, payment terms)
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Shopify Flow for automation
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Shopify Functions for logic
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Shopify Markets for cross-border
Brands that have completed a Magento-to-Shopify Plus migration generally report better performance, easier customization, and happier customers overall.
Adobe Commerce/Magento to Shopify Migration Checklist
Migrating to Shopify doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right planning and order of operations, you can ensure no broken links, transferred customer accounts/order history, preserved URL structures and more. Here are the steps to ensure a smooth replatforming project:
1. Adobe Store Audit and Data Sanitation
Before even beginning the planning phase, you’ll need to take stock of everything you currently have so you know exactly what you need to move. What to audit:
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Catalogue structure: Products, variants, configurable products, attributes/attribute sets, categories, and hierarchy.
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Data model: Custom fields, product relationships, pricing logic (tiered, group pricing).
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Extensions and integrations: Payment gateways, ERP, OMS, PIM, shipping and tax tools.
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B2B setup (if relevant): Companies and hierarchies, shared catalogues, and customer groups.
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Content: CMS pages, blog content, landing pages
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SEO footprint: URL structure, redirects, indexed pages
While auditing your store, clean things up as you go. Migrating corrupt, obsolete, or duplicated data exponentially increases project risk. Teams should clean the Magento database, purge discontinued inventory, delete test orders, and consolidate fragmented customer records so that you’re starting off on Shopify with the cleanest possible slate.
2. Mapping Data and Business Logic into Shopify Plus
Considerations for Data Migration
Data migration is obviously the core of any replatforming project; it also seems a lot simpler than it is. Adobe Commerce gives merchants considerable flexibility in how catalogue data is organized, but that flexibility doesn’t always translate cleanly into Shopify’s product model. The earlier you identify those differences, the fewer surprises you’ll face during development.
The first step is to decide which data should move, which should be cleaned, and which should be left behind. It also helps to use this as an opportunity to fix outdated product data, remove duplicate customer records, clean up old categories, retire unused attributes, and simplify bloated systems.
Adobe Commerce setups often include customer groups, shared catalogues, company accounts, approval workflows, tax rules, and custom pricing structures.
These need to be mapped carefully into Shopify Plus features such as companies, company locations, catalogues, payment terms, and customer-specific pricing. Some Adobe attributes may be converted to Shopify metafields. Some may become filters. Others may no longer be needed at all.
Adobe categories and Shopify collections aren’t identical. Some category structures can be recreated manually, while others may be better handled through automated collections based on product tags, vendors, types, or metafields. Consider whether your current setup still makes sense, or if it’s time to change things up.
Next is customer data. Basic customer records can migrate to Shopify, but customer passwords generally do not, due to encryption and security constraints. With Shopify’s newer customer accounts, customers can log in with a one-time code sent to their email address, reducing friction after launch. Still, your team should plan communications around account access so customers aren’t confused when the new site goes live.
Order history is another major decision. At a minimum, you should migrate any orders still within your return, exchange, or warranty window.
Many merchants also choose to migrate two to five years of historical orders to support customer service, reporting, and loyalty workflows. This usually requires more than a simple CSV import. Depending on your needs, order migration may involve Shopify APIs, third-party migration tools, or custom scripts.
Finally, gift cards, store credit, discounts, and loyalty balances also need special attention, as they are high-risk data points that customers notice immediately when they’re wrong. Migrate your gift card data as close to launch as feasible, so it's as up to date as possible.
Translating Business Logic to Shopify Plus
One of the biggest mistakes merchants make is assuming every Adobe Commerce feature should be recreated exactly in Shopify. This is rarely the best approach.
Adobe Commerce and Shopify Plus are different platforms with different strengths. A successful migration should translate your business requirements rather than try to duplicate your old technical setup.
For example, a custom Adobe discount rule may be better rebuilt using Shopify Functions. A manual customer-tagging workflow can be replaced with Shopify Flow. A complex extension stack for international selling may be simplified through Shopify Markets. A custom B2B catalogue setup may be rebuilt using Shopify’s native B2B features.
For B2B merchants, this step is especially important. Adobe Commerce B2B structures often include shared catalogues, customer groups, company roles, custom pricing, tax exemptions, credit limits, purchase approvals, and negotiated payment terms. In Shopify Plus, these requirements need to be mapped into companies, company locations, catalogues, payment terms, customer permissions, and potentially custom apps or middleware.
3. Preserve SEO and Content Equity
SEO preservation is one of the most important aspects of any Adobe Commerce-to-Shopify migration. It’s also one of the easiest to underestimate.
A replatform can change your URL structure, page templates, metadata, internal links, structured data, site speed, canonical tags, and content hierarchy. Search engines need clear signals to understand what moved, where it moved, and what should continue ranking.
Start with a full URL inventory of your Adobe Commerce site. This should include product pages, category pages, CMS pages, blog posts, landing pages, filtered pages that receive traffic, and any legacy URLs with backlinks. Then map each important old URL to the most relevant new Shopify URL.
Avoid lazy redirects. Your Adobe-to-Shopify URL redirects should be one-to-one wherever possible. If an exact equivalent doesn’t exist on the new online store, redirect to the closest relevant product category, collection, or content page.
You should also review metadata, headings, image alt text, internal links, schema markup, and canonical tags before launch. Product and collection templates in Shopify may not match your Adobe Commerce templates exactly, so SEO elements need to be rebuilt intentionally.
International SEO adds another layer. If your Adobe Commerce store uses multiple websites, store views, subdomains, or localized URLs, you need to plan how that structure will work in Shopify Markets. This may involve country-specific domains, subfolders, translated content, localized pricing, and market-specific redirects.
After launch, keep a close eye on your Google Search Console. Look for 404 errors, redirect issues, crawl anomalies, sitemap problems, ranking changes, and traffic drops. Some fluctuation is normal after a migration, but preventable Shopify migration SEO mistakes should be caught quickly so you can fix them before they become bigger issues.
4. Build the Shopify Experience Properly
Once the data and logic are planned, the storefront can be rebuilt. This is the most exciting step of the replatforming process. A migration is a perfect opportunity to improve the customer experience, refresh the design, and clean up old UX patterns.
Design your storefront around Shopify’s strengths. This means using a modern theme architecture, flexible sections, clean templates, fast-loading pages, and third-party app integrations that won’t slow the site down. The goal here is to make the store easier for customers to use and for internal teams to manage.
Review your navigation carefully, as your Adobe Commerce category structure may not be the best structure for Shopify. Product discovery, search, filtering, merchandising, and collection logic should be evaluated based on how customers actually shop.
Checkout should also be approached strategically. Shopify Plus allows for checkout customization, but that doesn’t mean every old checkout behaviour should be recreated. Keep checkout as clean as possible, then add only the custom logic that supports conversion, compliance, shipping accuracy, or B2B requirements.
For example, you might need custom payment rules, delivery rules, wholesale messaging, or purchase order options. These should be planned through Shopify-native tools, checkout extensions, Shopify Functions, or custom development where appropriate.
5. Reconnect Integrations and Operational Systems
Ecommerce platforms don’t stand alone. They’re just one part of a much larger ecosystem of tools and platforms.
Before launch, every integration needs to be reviewed, replaced, rebuilt, or retired. This includes your ERP, inventory management system, order management system (OMS), product information management system (PIM), shipping tools, tax software, email marketing platform, analytics setup, customer service tools, loyalty program, and payment gateways.
Some integrations might be simpler in Shopify because native apps already exist. Others may need custom middleware to keep data flowing correctly between systems. For example, if your ERP is the source of truth for inventory, pricing, fulfilment, or customer data, your Shopify build needs to respect that architecture.
6. QA, Go-Live, and Post-Launch Monitoring
Considerations for Quality Assurance
Testing should begin before launch and continue after launch. Your team should test the obvious paths as well as the weird ones. We’re all aware that customers have a magical talent for finding the one edge-case scenario nobody thought to test.
Start with the full purchasing journey. Test product browsing, search, filtering, cart behaviour, checkout, payment processing, shipping rates, taxes, discounts, gift cards, order confirmation emails, and account creation. Then test the same flow across desktop, mobile, different browsers, different markets, and different customer types.
For B2B stores, test company accounts, customer permissions, payment terms, catalogue visibility, negotiated pricing, purchase orders, and tax settings. If different customers see different products or prices, those rules need to be validated carefully.
Integration testing is just as important. Confirm that orders flow into your ERP or OMS, inventory updates correctly, customer data syncs, fulfilment statuses return to Shopify, and marketing events are tracked properly. Analytics should be tested before launch, not discovered broken three weeks later when someone asks why revenue reporting looks strange.
SEO QA should include redirect testing, sitemap review, metadata checks, indexability checks, canonical validation, and 404 monitoring. Use a crawler before launch to catch issues early.
Carefully Plan to Go Live
Before go-live, set a freeze period for your Adobe Commerce store to prevent new data from drifting between systems. Complete a final data sync as close to launch as possible, especially for orders, customers, inventory, gift cards, and loyalty balances.
Your DNS cutover should be planned with your development team, hosting contacts, internal stakeholders, and any vendors. Everyone should know the launch window, the rollback plan, and who is responsible for each part of the process.
Immediately after launch, place test orders, confirm payment processing, check shipping rates, review transactional emails, validate tracking scripts, and monitor customer support channels. You should also check that the domain resolves correctly, redirects work, and the sitemap is accessible.
Monitor and Optimize After Launch
Monitor organic traffic, rankings, conversion rate, checkout completion, site speed, order volume, support tickets, failed payments, fulfilment issues, and customer account questions. Expect a few small issues to come up at this point.
In terms of SEO, look for broken redirects, crawl errors, unexpected drops in the number of indexed pages, duplicate content issues, and missing metadata.
Operationally, review how your team is using Shopify. Are workflows easier? Are orders moving correctly? Are customers finding what they need? Are internal users struggling with new processes?
This is also the perfect time to start optimizing. Once the new platform is stable, you can improve merchandising, run conversion tests, refine automation, adjust navigation, enhance product content, and build out new Shopify Plus capabilities.
When to Bring in an Agency
If your Adobe Commerce store is small, simple, and mostly out of the box, a migration might be manageable with the right internal resources and migration tools.
But, if your store includes B2B pricing, custom integrations, complex product data, ERP dependencies, multi-market selling, custom checkout logic, or years of SEO equity, you might want to bring an external team on board.
Working with an agency that understands both Adobe Commerce and Shopify Plus can make a major difference. A dual-platform partner can properly audit your existing Adobe setup, identify what should move, translate business logic into Shopify-native tools, protect SEO, and build a launch plan that reduces risk.
At Blue Badger, we are agency partners for Adobe Commerce and Shopify Plus, which gives us a practical view of both sides of the migration. With years of experience, we know what a successful replatforming project looks like and can help you steer clear of common pitfalls that happen with more complex migration projects.
Conclusion
Migrating from Adobe Commerce or Magento to Shopify Plus can be a smart move for ecommerce businesses that want a faster, cleaner, and more manageable platform. But a successful migration depends on much more than just moving products into a new store.
You need to understand your existing Adobe Commerce setup, clean your data, map business logic into Shopify Plus, protect your SEO equity, rebuild integrations, test edge cases, and monitor performance after launch.
If your current store includes complex product data, B2B pricing, custom integrations, ERP dependencies, multi-market selling, or years of organic search equity, working with an experienced migration partner can reduce risk and help you launch with confidence.
As both an Adobe Commerce and Shopify Plus partner, we at Blue Badger understand what merchants are moving away from, what they are moving toward, and where migration projects are most likely to hit roadblocks. Get in touch with us today to learn more about migrating to Shopify Plus.
