Migrating to Shopify Plus: a complete guide

Shopify Plus opens up entirely new possibilities for online stores. The platform offers extended marketing tools, advanced personalisation options, a high level of data security and the infrastructure reliability that growing businesses need.

Companies migrating from PrestaShop, Magento, WooCommerce or custom solutions most commonly cite three key motivators: rising costs of maintaining the current system, scalability limitations during sales peaks, and too-long deployment times for new features. Shopify Plus solves all three problems at once.

The trend of migrating to Shopify Plus grows every year. Open-source platforms that were the enterprise e-commerce standard just a few years ago are increasingly giving way to SaaS solutions. Several reasons explain this:

• Flexibility and scalability — Shopify Plus automatically scales to demand, handling Black Friday without downtime
• Access to advanced analytics — built-in reports and integration with external BI tools
• Faster deployment of new features — ecosystem of 13,000+ apps and native tools like Shopify Flow
• Lower TCO — no server maintenance costs, security updates or vulnerability patching

Matrixify, formerly Excelify, is the key tool for every Shopify migration. It enables efficient data transfer in CSV or XLSX format, handling products, customer data, orders, blog posts and metafields simultaneously.

The app's main capabilities:

• Bulk import and export of data preserving category and variant structure
• Automatic creation of URL redirects during product import
• Data validation before import with an error report
• Preservation of external identifiers for ERP and other system integrations

301 redirects are one of the most important elements of any migration. Changing the URL structure without proper redirects can cause a loss of 30-70% of organic traffic within a few days of launching the new store.

Shopify Plus allows the import of even tens of thousands of redirects at once via the admin panel or API. Redirects should be prepared and tested in a staging environment before the production launch — not after it.

Customer passwords cannot be transferred directly — for security reasons no platform stores them in reversible form. When migrating to Shopify Plus, two approaches are available:

• Automatic password reset emails — after the new store launches, the system sends customers messages with a link to set a new password
• Social media login — integration with Google, Facebook or Apple ID eliminates the password problem entirely

Both approaches should be combined with appropriate advance communication to the customer base to prepare them for the change.

Before beginning the technical part of migration, a thorough audit is necessary. The first phase includes:

• Site architecture analysis — navigation patterns, traffic sources in Google Analytics, URL map
• Data inventory — products, variants, customers, orders, content
• List of current integrations and apps to replace or transfer
• SEO strategy — which URLs generate traffic and require redirects
• Design decision — redesign or transfer of the current look

Underestimating the importance of planning. A rushed migration always ends in problems — missing data, faulty redirects and frustrated customers. A good plan means at least 2 weeks before the first line of code.

Neglecting SEO matters. Missing URL mapping, overlooked canonical tags, sitemap not submitted to Google Search Console — any of these errors can independently ruin organic traffic after migration.

Ignoring platform feature differences. Shopify Plus has different capabilities than Magento or PrestaShop. Trying to replicate all functions of the old system one-to-one leads nowhere — better to explore what Shopify Plus offers natively or through ready-made apps.

A professional migration proceeds through eight stages:

1. Assessment and planning — analysis of the current platform, defining project scope and timeline
2. Data preparation — cleaning, deduplication, field mapping between platforms
3. Shopify Plus configuration — store setup, markets, currencies, tax rates and payment gateways
4. Data import — products, customers, orders in the defined sequence with validation of each batch
5. Testing — comprehensive tests on the staging environment before production launch
6. SEO optimisation and URL redirects — redirect import, meta tags, sitemap, canonical tags
7. Team training — onboarding to the Shopify panel, new order handling processes
8. Launch and monitoring — go-live, first 48 hours of intensive monitoring

The common denominator of the successful migrations we have carried out is meticulous planning, focus on customer experience and thorough testing before launch. Three examples from our portfolio:

BEBE Concept — migration from PrestaShop to Shopify Plus combined with a full redesign of a luxury store. Result: 40% increase in conversion in the first quarter after deployment.

Bizuu — transfer of a fashion store from a custom system to Shopify Plus while preserving the full order history. Implementation time: 10 weeks.

Genactiv — migration from PrestaShop with support for 200+ supplement variants and full integration with the WMS system. Zero downtime during migration.

A successful migration to Shopify Plus rests on five pillars: data integrity, security prioritisation, comprehensive testing, structured planning and transparent communication with customers throughout the process.

Migration is not a one-off project — it is an investment in the foundation you will build on for years to come. It is worth investing time in a good start. If you are planning a migration, talk to us — we would be happy to assess the specifics of your project.