Welcome to our monthly e-commerce industry report for October 2025. This month's data paints a vivid picture of a dynamic market, characterized by significant platform shifts, strategic modernizations, and continuous technological enhancements across leading platforms. Our analysis delves into the underlying motivations and implications of these trends, offering a forward-looking perspective for strategic decision-making.

An e-commerce analyst pointing to a holographic map showing data migrations from old e-commerce platforms to new, modern ones, emphasizing a strong flow towards Shopify.
An e-commerce analyst pointing to a holographic map showing data migrations from old e-commerce platforms to new, modern ones, emphasizing a strong flow towards Shopify.

Insights & Trends

October 2025 data confirms a strong undercurrent of strategic repositioning within the e-commerce landscape. We observed several key trends:

  1. The Great Replatforming Continues: This month solidified a clear trend where established businesses are actively migrating from legacy systems to more modern, scalable platforms. A significant portion of completed migrations originated from older stores, some dating back to the late 1990s and early 2000s (e.g., from Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart, and Volusion). This indicates a widespread recognition among mature enterprises of the need to upgrade their core infrastructure to meet current market demands.
  2. Shopify's Unabated Gravitational Pull: Shopify continues to dominate as the primary target for migrations, attracting a diverse array of merchants from platforms such as Wix, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento. This consistent influx underscores Shopify's robust ecosystem, ease of use, and expanding feature set for businesses of all sizes.
  3. WooCommerce's Versatile, Yet Fluid, Position: WooCommerce merchants demonstrate high mobility, frequently migrating to Shopify but also engaging in significant intra-platform upgrades. This fluidity highlights WooCommerce's adaptability for diverse business models, but also suggests that some businesses may be seeking more managed solutions or advanced scalability as they mature beyond its initial capabilities.
  4. Wix Merchants Seek Growth Horizons: There's a noticeable pattern of businesses migrating from Wix, predominantly to Shopify. This indicates that while Wix serves as an excellent starting point for many, its scalability and specialized e-commerce features may fall short for merchants experiencing rapid growth or requiring more complex functionalities.
  5. Substantial Data Volumes in Motion: October saw numerous migrations involving considerable data volumes, with several exceeding 50,000 entities and one even surpassing 1.3 million. These large-scale data transfers, particularly from Magento and PrestaShop, underscore the critical importance of reliable migration services that can handle complex data sets with integrity and precision.
  6. Niche Platform Graduations: Smaller, niche platforms like BigCartel, Ecwid, Squarespace, and GoDaddy consistently feed into the larger ecosystems, mainly Shopify. This trend reflects the natural progression of small businesses, starting with simpler solutions and then transitioning to more comprehensive platforms as their operational needs evolve.

Predictions for Q1 2026:

  1. Enterprise-Level Shopify Adoption Accelerates: Given Shopify's recent increase in product variant limits to 2048 and the acceptance of ACH bank payments for B2B, we anticipate an acceleration of larger, enterprise-level merchants migrating to Shopify from platforms like Magento and BigCommerce, further challenging traditional enterprise solutions.
  2. Demand for Pre-Migration Audits to Soar: The complexity of migrating from deeply entrenched legacy systems, coupled with substantial data volumes, will drive a heightened demand for specialized pre-migration consulting and data auditing services. Businesses will prioritize minimizing downtime and ensuring data integrity above all else.
  3. Wix's Ecosystem Faces Increased Headwinds: Despite Wix's introduction of Multi-Page Application (MPA) architecture, the underlying demand for deeper e-commerce functionality will likely lead to an increased rate of Wix-to-Shopify migrations, as merchants prioritize specialized retail features over general site performance improvements.
Comic book style illustration of various e-commerce platform mascots presenting new features and updates to an excited audience of merchants.
Comic book style illustration of various e-commerce platform mascots presenting new features and updates to an excited audience of merchants.

Platform & Technical Updates

October was a period of strategic refinement and expansion for many leading e-commerce platforms, complemented by critical internal development efforts to enhance user experience and core functionality.

Major Platform Announcements:

  • Square: Released comprehensive new toolsets tailored specifically for restaurants, services, and retailers, aiming to empower diverse business types with more specialized operational capabilities. Source URL
  • Shift4Shop: Introduced significant enhancements to its Orders Hub, including an improved order summary, a dedicated shipping method filter, better customer comment displays, and adjustable column widths for a more streamlined user experience. Furthermore, automatic shipment tracking updates are now sent to PayPal after order capture, boosting buyer transparency and aiding in dispute resolution. Source URL
  • Wix: Launched a new Multi-Page Application (MPA) architecture designed to deliver faster and more reliable page loading across its sites. Developers also received new tools, with the release of the Restaurants Experiences API (Version 1.0.294) for creating unique dining offerings, and a Folders API (Version 1.0.36) to better manage collections within the Wix CMS. Source URL
  • VirtueMart: Issued a crucial Security release 4.6.0, bringing general updates to filters and enhanced functions. This update also introduced new namespaced files, allowing modern code to integrate seamlessly with the existing 4.6 core, alongside general enhancements for pagination, OPC bs5 layout, and consistent display of shipment/payment options. Source URL
  • Shopify: Made a significant move to support larger merchants by increasing the product variant limit to an impressive 2048 (up from 100). For brick-and-mortar operations, subscriptions are now available directly in POS, opening new recurring revenue streams. Additionally, US-based wholesale customers can now use ACH bank payments through Shopify Payments for B2B transactions. Source URL
  • BigCommerce: Focused on developer experience with cleaner APIs, simplifying refund quotes, improving shipping cost comparisons, and enhancing Cart image_url documentation. They also rolled out comprehensive Wishlists documentation to encourage broader storefront adoption and provide a robust developer reference. Finally, B2B Edition Token Modernization & Alignment was implemented, unifying token styles across B2B and core functionalities. Source URL

Internal Development Highlights:

Behind the scenes, development teams focused on critical improvements throughout October. Key resolutions included enhancing Shopify app API performance, implementing UI refinements such as making important buttons more prominent, updating global loader designs for a smoother user experience, and adding submitted messages to forms for clearer user feedback. Significant progress was made on Shopify-specific features, including enabling support for 2048 variants in exports/imports and establishing a full setup endpoint for quicker migrations directly from the Shopify app. Other notable fixes addressed broken logo images in public blocks, allowed NopCommerce files for clients, and resolved product category migration issues for Virtuemart 1.x. Internal tools also saw improvements, such as the implementation of a fields mapping view and the ability to apply local tokens directly within the migration wizard for streamlined debugging and setup. Finally, the demo migration experience was refined by hiding skipped entities files and increasing the entity limit to 20, alongside a fix for the FAQ search functionality.

A comic book newsroom scene with a news anchor inviting viewers to read weekly e-commerce news, surrounded by busy reporters and flashing headlines.
A comic book newsroom scene with a news anchor inviting viewers to read weekly e-commerce news, surrounded by busy reporters and flashing headlines.

From the Weekly News Desk

As your Chief E-commerce Analyst, I keep a close eye on the latest happenings in the industry to bring you the most critical updates. While this month didn't see a flood of newsworthy events that met our stringent criteria for immediate publication, the ongoing trends and platform developments discussed above certainly represent the significant shifts underway in the e-commerce world. We encourage you to regularly check our weekly news digests for timely insights and announcements as they break.