Magento to Shopify Plus Migration: Scoping the Move Before You Commit

If you have priced a Magento to Shopify Plus migration and the quotes barely resembled each other, nobody is necessarily overcharging you. “Migration” covers two different jobs under one name. A 300-SKU catalog on a stock checkout is one project. A 12,000-SKU B2B catalog with three custom extensions and contract pricing built into checkout is another, and the quotes reflect that gap.

So before you request a quote, answer a narrower question: what in your current Magento setup will make this move harder or more expensive than the next store’s? This guide covers what maps cleanly to Shopify Plus, what has to be rebuilt, how checkout logic and B2B pricing carry over, and what drives the timeline and the final number. It assumes Magento 2 (Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce). Magento 1 stores follow the same scoping logic with more data cleanup, since Magento 1 has had no official support since June 2020.

For the step-by-step process of moving any Magento store to Shopify, from data export to launch day, use our Magento to Shopify migration checklist. This piece covers the Plus-specific decisions that come before that process. If you would rather hand the whole move to one team, here is what our Shopify migration services include.

Does a Magento Store Need Shopify Plus, or Is Standard Shopify Enough?

Not automatically. Since April 2, 2026, Shopify’s foundational B2B features ship on Basic, Grow and Advanced as well as Plus, so a Magento history no longer means Plus by default.

Magento merchants are used to a specific kind of flexibility: deep checkout customization, granular customer groups, multi-store setups, and attribute sets that can describe almost anything. For years, replicating that on Shopify meant Plus. The table shows where that still holds.

Signal	Standard Shopify usually fits	Shopify Plus usually needed
B2B pricing structure	A handful of company locations, up to three active catalogs, simple volume pricing	Many company locations needing catalog-specific assignment, partial payments or deposits
Checkout customization	Built-in checkout settings, or extensions limited to the Thank you and Order status pages	Custom fields, validation rules and branding across the full checkout flow
Attribute and content structure	A modest set of product attributes and reusable content blocks	A large attribute library approaching the metaobject definition ceiling on lower plans
Integration volume	One or two standard, app-based integrations	ERP, PIM or custom middleware with high API call volume
Store footprint	A single storefront	Multiple expansion stores under one brand contract

If most of your answers land in the left column, standard Shopify may cover you. Every paid plan now includes company profiles, up to three active B2B catalogs, volume pricing, quantity rules and payment terms. Below Plus, catalogs are assigned through B2B markets rather than to individual companies, and the store has to run on the new Shopify Markets.

Plus still earns its price in a few specific places. Full checkout customization beyond the Thank you and Order status pages is Plus-only, as is checkout branding through the GraphQL Admin API. Unlimited B2B catalogs, direct catalog assignment to specific companies and locations, and partial payments or deposits also stay on Plus. API capacity scales by plan: Advanced gets up to 2x the standard rate on select APIs and Plus up to 10x, which matters most for ERP or PIM integrations that sync inventory and pricing throughout the day. If Plus is the answer for your store, here is what a Shopify Plus build with our team involves.

On price, Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month on a three-year term or $2,500 a month on a one-year term for standard setups. More complex businesses move to a variable platform fee based on revenue. Shopify does not publish the threshold or the rate, so treat any percentage quoted online as a starting point for the sales conversation and not a confirmed number.

What Magento Data Maps Cleanly to Shopify Plus, and What Doesn’t

Products, customers and order history move across with standard tooling. The harder part is the structure underneath them. Magento’s EAV data model lets almost anything become an attribute, and that flexibility has no one-to-one equivalent on Shopify.

Attributes, Attribute Sets and Metafields

Magento attribute sets group attributes that are reused across products, such as material, care instructions or fit. On Shopify the equivalent is a mix of metafields and metaobjects, and the right choice depends on how the data is used.

An attribute that holds a single value for one product (a text string, a number, a yes or no) becomes a metafield. An attribute that describes a reusable concept referenced across many products (a care guide, a certification badge, a fabric composition block) fits better as a metaobject definition. You build it once and reference it from every relevant product.

These are the limits to scope around, per Shopify’s developer documentation:

Limit	Value
Merchant metafield definitions per resource type	256
Pinned metafield definitions per resource type	20
Size limit, most metafield types	64KB
JSON metafield writes (API 2026-04 and later, new apps)	128KB
ID and URL metafields	2KB
Metaobject definitions	128 on Basic, Grow and Advanced; 256 on Plus
Fields per metaobject definition	40
Entries per metaobject definition	1,000,000

A Magento catalog with dozens of attribute sets rarely needs a Shopify field for every Magento attribute. Most of the mapping work is consolidation. Attributes tied to one product type become metafields, and attributes describing something reused across the catalog become a metaobject definition. The pin limit deserves attention early: only 20 definitions per resource type show by default in the product editor, so decide which fields your team edits daily before the import.

Customer Groups and B2B Pricing Tiers

Magento customer groups (wholesale, retail, VIP) with group-specific catalog price rules map onto Shopify’s companies, company locations, catalogs and price lists.

If your store runs two or three customer groups with group-wide pricing, that fits standard Shopify B2B, within the three-active-catalog limit that applies across all markets combined.

Plus covers the deeper end: unlimited catalogs, catalogs assigned directly to specific companies and locations instead of broad groups, and partial payments or deposits. Dozens of customer groups with location-specific contract pricing, or B2B customers who pay in installments, currently require Plus.

Which Magento Extensions Need Custom Development on Plus?

Before scoping, list every active Magento extension and sort each one into one of three buckets: replaced by a native Shopify feature, replaced by an App Store app, or rebuilt as custom development. The third bucket drives cost.

Magento extension category	Typical Shopify Plus replacement
B2B or wholesale portal	Native Shopify B2B on all plans, with Plus for unlimited catalogs and location-level pricing
Subscriptions or recurring billing	A subscription app built on Shopify selling plans, such as Shopify Subscriptions or a third-party app
Custom checkout fields or validation	Checkout UI extensions plus Cart and Checkout Validation Functions
Advanced search or layered navigation	Shopify Search & Discovery, or a dedicated search app
Multi-currency or multi-language	Shopify Markets, with Translate & Adapt or a translation app
Loyalty and rewards	An App Store loyalty app, with discount Functions for non-standard mechanics
Marketplace feed connectors	Shopify’s native sales channels, or a dedicated feed app
ERP, PIM or OMS connectors	An existing connector app, or custom middleware using Plus API limits

Extensions that map to a native feature or an app rarely move the budget much. Custom development starts with the ones that don’t: a proprietary pricing engine, a shipping calculator tied to your warehouse system, a loyalty mechanic no app matches. Flag those before you request a quote.

How Custom Magento Checkout Logic Gets Rebuilt on Shopify Plus

Custom Magento checkout logic is rebuilt from scratch on Shopify’s Checkout Extensibility framework. No legacy route for porting old code remains.

Magento allows deep checkout customization through layout XML and module overrides. On Shopify, the older Plus-only tools for this job have all been retired. checkout.liquid is unsupported for the Information, Shipping and Payment steps and was sunset for the Thank you and Order status pages on August 28, 2025. Script tags on those pages were sunset for non-Plus stores on August 26, 2026. Shopify Scripts, the Ruby-based layer Plus merchants used for discount, shipping and payment logic, stopped running after June 30, 2026.

The current framework has four parts:

• Checkout UI extensions add custom fields, content or upsells at defined points in checkout without touching core checkout code.
• Shopify Functions replace backend logic for discounts, shipping and payment options, and power Cart and Checkout Validation: age checks, forbidden product combinations, order minimums and maximums.
• The Checkout Branding API controls styling.
• Web pixels handle event tracking.

Full checkout customization through Checkout UI extensions is Plus-only. Other plans can extend the Thank you and Order status pages, but not the Information, Shipping and Payment steps.

In practice, a gift-message field, a rule that two items can’t ship together, or a location-based payment restriction each gets rebuilt as an extension or a Function. There is no translation layer between Magento’s module system and Shopify’s extension architecture, so budget this as development time.

How to Build the Redirect Map for Magento URLs

Every indexed Magento URL needs its own mapped 301 redirect, because the two platforms structure URLs differently and no single rule translates between them.

Magento 2 serves products at /product-name.html and, depending on the Use Categories Path for Product URLs setting, at category paths such as /category/subcategory/product-name.html. One product can resolve at several addresses, and each version Google has indexed needs a redirect. Categories follow the same nested pattern, and layered navigation adds filter parameters on top. Shopify is flatter: /products/handle for products and /collections/handle for collections, with no native nested categories.

Build the URL list from two sources. Magento’s url_rewrite table holds every path the store generated. Search Console shows which of those paths Google actually indexed and which ones earn clicks.

Magento URL pattern	Shopify equivalent	Redirect note
/product-name.html	/products/product-name	Direct 301; confirm the handle is unique
/category/subcategory/product-name.html	/products/product-name	Same target; map every category path Google indexed
/category/subcategory.html	/collections/subcategory	Direct 301 if the collection is recreated one to one
/catalogsearch/result/?q=term	/search?q=term	Usually not indexed; map only if Search Console shows it
/category.html?color=49	/collections/category	Send filtered URLs to the parent collection

Shopify supports bulk redirect import through a CSV upload in the URL redirects section of the admin, which is how a catalog with thousands of URLs gets handled. Keep in mind that Shopify only applies a redirect when nothing exists at the old path, so a redirect that collides with a live page or collection handle is silently ignored.

Review targets by hand in order of what the old page earns: first pages with organic clicks, then pages with external backlinks, then pages with steady impressions. Those deserve a checked one-to-one target. Everything else can go through the bulk file.

Timeline and Phasing for an Enterprise Catalog

The length of a Magento to Shopify Plus migration depends mostly on catalog size, the number of custom integrations, and how much of checkout needs rebuilding. The work runs in the phases below, with overlap on larger projects:

• Discovery and data audit. Full data export, an attribute and extension audit, and a first draft of the redirect map.
• Data migration and mapping. Products, customers, order history, and the metafield or metaobject structure that replaces Magento attribute sets.
• Theme and checkout build. Runs largely in parallel with data migration on larger projects.
• Integrations. Overlaps with the phases above. Length depends on whether the target systems have a documented API.
• QA and user acceptance testing. Full-store testing, including checkout extensions, B2B pricing per company location, and a sample of redirects.
• Launch and redirect cutover. Measured in days, provided the freeze window and go-live sequence were defined in advance.

Discovery is the phase that makes the rest predictable. Until the extension and attribute audit is done, any timeline is an estimate. Projects run long when B2B pricing is tied to specific company locations, when several Magento store views or languages need rebuilding in Shopify Markets, when the redirect map runs into thousands of URLs, or when checkout logic needs custom Function development instead of an off-the-shelf app.

What Drives the Cost of a Shopify Plus Migration

There is no fixed price for a Magento to Shopify Plus migration, and a number quoted without seeing your catalog and extension list is a guess. These are the factors that move the estimate:

Catalog and attribute complexity. A large EAV attribute structure with many configurable products and variant combinations takes longer to map into metafields and metaobjects than a flat catalog of simple products.

Extension replacement. Extensions in the custom development bucket add real cost. Those replaced by a native feature or an App Store app add little.

Checkout logic rebuild. Custom validation, custom fields and custom pricing rules are rebuilt as Checkout UI extensions and Shopify Functions. That is development time.

Redirect map size. A catalog with thousands of indexed URLs needs more scoping and QA around redirects, and mistakes here cost organic traffic directly.

Design scope. Adapting an existing theme costs far less than a fully custom Plus storefront, and the gap widens with integration count and B2B logic. The same trade-off applies to any custom Shopify development project.

Staying on Magento has its own running cost: hosting, security patching, extension licenses and developer time for upgrades. Shopify includes hosting and security in the plan fee, from $39 a month on Basic to $2,300 a month for Plus on a three-year term. Shopify reports that Bombas saved $108,000 in platform costs in its first year after replatforming from Magento to Shopify Plus. Your own comparison depends on what you pay today, so put your current Magento running costs next to the migration quote.

If your catalog, integrations or checkout requirements don’t fit neatly into the patterns above, that is normal for an enterprise Magento setup, and it is what a scoping call is for. Our Shopify Plus team can walk through your setup and give you a number based on it.