How to Migrate From Magento (Adobe Commerce) To Shopify [2022]

	Magento	Shopify	Winner
Platform Overview	Free, open-source, self-hosted solution. You will need to pay for your domain, extensions, web-hosting, and security.	Paid, fully-hosted solution with no additional monthly costs. The domain, extensions, hosting, and security are all factored into the cost.	Shopify
Ease of Use	Steep learning curve with loads of backend and frontend coding to build your site.	Beginner-friendly with an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder.	Shopify
Themes	6 website templates are available on the Magento marketplace, out of which only one is free.	More than 80 free and premium professionally-designed website templates are available for download.	Shopify
Sales Toolkit	Multichannel sales via eBay, Instagram, and Facebook Checkout customization capability Abandoned cart recovery feature Fixed and percentage-based price discounts	Multichannel sales via eBay, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, and Pinterest Checkout customization capability Abandoned cart recovery with automated email alerts to customers Price discount customization capability Built-in courier partnerships with UPS, DHL Express, USPS, Canada Post, etc. Supports the sale of physical and digital merchandise	Shopify
Marketing Toolkit	The majority of Magento’s marketing tools come from third-party extensions with no built-in tools Requires a developer to create bespoke marketing features	Powerful built-in and third-party integrations for email campaigns such as Constant Contact and Klaviyo Supports direct advertising and sales on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest Supports multilingual websites for a wider audience reach	Shopify
Apps and Add-Ons	5,000+ apps in various categories, including customer support, payments & security, marketing, accounting & finance, shipping & fulfillment, and site optimization.	7,000+ apps in several categories, including store design, store management, marketing, conversion, customer service, merchandising, shipping & delivery, fulfillment, etc.	Shopify
Payment Processing	Supports 300+ payment integrationswith top-rated providers across the globe, including PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, and Amazon Pay.	Supports Shopify Payments and more than 100 other payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, and Amazon Pay.	Magento
SEO	Adobe Commerce has several built-in SEO features such as: Plenty of SEO prompts and guides Custom URLs for product pages Allows users to edit alt tags for product images Keyword optimized descriptions and meta titles	Shopify relies more on third-party apps for site optimization. Built-in features supported by the platform include: URL customization for product pages Users can edit image alt-tags and add Keyword optimized descriptions and meta titles	Shopify
Customer Support	No dedicated support representatives.	24/7 support via live chat, phone, email, and social media. Additionally, there’s a community forum, video tutorials, and help center resources available.	Shopify

Data	Up-Time	Cost
Every piece of customer data, order data, manufacturer data, supplier data, and product data will be migrated to your new platform with no risk of data loss.	Migrating from Magento to Shopify using data transfer tools like Cart2Cart only takes a few hours to complete with no site downtime whatsoever.	It is the most cost-effective solution, both time-wise and resource-wise. You don’t need to hire a team of experts to do the migration for you.

How to Prepare for Magento to Shopify Migration

Before you make the big switch from Magento to Shopify, there are some critical measures you need to take beforehand to make sure you have a smooth transition through and through.

1. Manage Your Magento Store

While using an automated migration tool like Cart2Cart is designed to mitigate the risk of losing precious data when transferring to a new platform, you still need to backup your store data. This is the golden rule of data migration. You also need to perform a data audit and validate the credentials of your current store.

Here’s what you need to do:

Create a Backup

You can never be too careful. Ensure that you backup your store database before initiating the migration process. You can backup your data in Magento using any of the three options outlined below:

• Database backup – Creates a copy of the database only
• Media and database backup – Creates a backup of both the database and the files in the media folder
• System backup – Creates a complete backup of the entire database, file system, and the files in the media folder

Do a Site Data Audit

Carry out an in-depth audit of your store data and create an accurate inventory of the details you hold. Analyze the data held in fields like the Product Name, Product Descriptions, Passwords, Customer Data, Contact Information, and so forth. Comb through everything and identify what to keep versus what to trash.

Validate Your Store Credentials

The final step involves creating a strong link between your existing Magento platform and what is about to become your new Shopify store. To do this, you need to validate the access credentials of your current store, including the FTP/SSH, URL, etc. Only then will the source store connect with the target store to commence the migration.

2. Prepare Your Shopify Store

Once everything is in order on the Magento end of things, it’s now time to take care of the Shopify side. Here’s how to prepare:

Get Your Shopify Store Ready

First, you need to set up your new Shopify website. There are three plans to choose from. The one you pick ultimately depends on the size of your online store and the features and functionalities you want it to have.

Use the 14-day free trial to get a feel for the platform. That way, you’ll know what package works for the current and long-term plans you have for your store and then upgrade or downgrade your bouquet as required.

Choose a Theme

Next, you’ll need to pick a theme. Your newly set up store will have the Shopify default theme installed. As tempting as it might be to choose a template from any of the 80+ professionally-designed themes on the platform, it would be better to hold off on customization until you’ve fully migrated your store from Magento.

Once you do, you can then either retain the theme you had previously installed on your old store or change things up by incorporating a new platform-specific Shopify theme.

Install the Necessary Apps

Apps and API integrations are designed to enhance the functionality of your store. Depending on the app you use for migration, installing the extensions you previously had to your new store might be an automated or manual process. If you’re using Cart2Cart, the process is automatic. If you’re not, ensure that you install the apps you had in your previous store when you convert Magento to Shopify.

How to Migrate From Magento to Shopify in 5 Steps

At this point, you’ve adequately prepared your Source store and Target Store for shopping cart migration. You’re now ready to initiate the process. This section of the migration guide will focus on the procedure for automated data transfer using a migration app – more specifically, Cart2Cart. It is by far the fastest, most convenient, error-free method of all the three possible approaches outlined earlier in the guide.

Use the Cart2Cart Free Demo to sign up and get started. In the meantime, here’s how to transfer website from Magento to Shopify using the app.

1. Connect Your Shopping Carts

In the Source Cart Setup window, click on the drop-down menu and select Magento from the list of options provided in the Source Cart field. Then, enter the URL of your Source store in the field provided.

Once you do, you will need to download and install the Connection Bridge to allow your two stores to communicate. Here’s how to go about it:

• Download the Connection Bridge
• Unpack the connection_bridge.zip file
• Extract the bridge2cart folder and use an FTP client to import it to the root catalog of your Magento store
• Check the status of the connection to the Source Store to confirm that a link has been created

Once you’ve set up your Source Cart, it is now time to set up your Shopify cart. In the Target Cart Setup window, select Shopify from the list of options provided in the Target Cart field. To enable your Shopify store connection, click the Install Plugin button to download and install the Migration for Shopify extension.

2. Select Data for Migration

The next step involves choosing the data you want to migrate from Magento to Shopify. Click on the Choose Entities button to select the data classes you want to transfer to your new store. Select All to highlight all the listed entities or select individual entities if you don’t want to migrate everything.

For instance, you can select Products and then check the specific data classes you want to migrate. In this case, these would be Reviews, Categories, and Manufacturers. If you select the Customers entity, you can then choose whether or not to include Orders in your migration.

Below is a list of the data entities you can migrate from Magento to Shopify:

• Product details including name, description, images, price, and existing stock
• Product visuals including size, color, and shape of the item
• List of purchased items, total price, payment information
• Static site pages including About Us, Contact Us, Terms and Conditions, etc
• SEO settings and redirects
• Integrations

3. Specify the Additional Migration Options

Once you’ve connected the shopping carts for your Source Store and Target Store and specified the data entities you want to be migrated, you now need to identify any additional migration options you might like to incorporate. The ones you pick ultimately depend on your specific needs. Here’s an overview of the available options:

• Migrate the categories in your Magento store to the Automated Collections in Shopify
• Create 301 redirects in your Shopify store after migration to ensure old category URLs and their respective products keep working in your new store
• Maintain your products’ link structures to ensure their migration SEO URLs preserve your new store’s ranking on SERPs.

4. Map Customer Groups and Order Statuses

The existing customer groups and order statuses you had in Magento will not be migrated to your new Shopify store. Instead, users can match their old groups and statuses with the ones they create in the new store.

In the Stores Mapping window of the app, check the Source Stores data group you want to create and then click on the corresponding Target Stores for the newly created store. If the required Order statuses don’t exist yet in the new store, click on the appropriate buttons to create them.

Here's something else worth noting when migrating Customers from Magento to Shopify: If there’s no valid customer email address on Magento, the Cart2Cart tool automatically creates a default email when migrating the orders. This is usually the case when guest users, who were not registered customers, ordered from your previous store.

That said, during the migration to Shopify, you may receive several email notifications about new orders while they are, in fact, the old orders that were migrated. You can deactivate these notifications by logging in to Shopify Settings, navigating to notifications, and then clicking Disable on the bottom right corner of the window.

5. Run Free Demo / Launch Full Migration

At this stage, you're now ready to run the Free Demo migration or launch the Full Migration if you’re on a paid plan. While the Demo migration will give you a feel for how the Cart2Cart migration tool works, the downside is – you can only transfer a limited number of entities in the 10-30 minute duration it runs.

The plus side to the Free Demo is, running it first before launching the full migration allows you to check the functionality of the Cart2Cart tool. Ensure you keep the window open until the process completes.

You’ll then need to check the migration results in your new Shopify store. If the newly migrated data is not visible on the frontend, confirm whether it is on the system backend. To do this, download the Product IDs file on the Demo Results page and check them against the migrated data in your new store’s backend.

Once you’ve confirmed that the Free Demo migration took place without a hitch, you can now proceed to launch the Full Migration.

How to Migrate Products From Magento to Shopify

Migrating your products from your old store to your new one is as simple as checking the relevant boxes displayed on the Cart2Cart migration wizard and initiating the migration. The product options available for migration include:

• Name, SKU, Product Description, Image Description, Status, Manufacturer
• Price, Special Price
• Quantity, Manage Stock
• Base Image, Additional Images
• URL, Meta Title, Meta Description
• Variants (SKU, Images, Quantity, Weight, Price, Special Price)
• Weight

Alternatively, there's the option to do it manually by using the Export function under the Magento (Adobe Commerce) settings. Here’s how:

1. Open the System Menu and click Export from the options provided
2. From the Entity Type drop-down menu, select Products and then pick CSV from the Export File Format list
3. Select the product attributes you want to transfer and then click Continue

How to Export Orders From Magento to Shopify

Cart2Cart also makes it easy to export orders from your old store to the new one. Here’s a list of the data you can export using the tool:

• Products (Name, SKU), ID, Product Price, Order Date, Quantity, Status, Price, Order Comments
• Shipping Address (First and Last Name, Address City, State, Zip Code, Country) Telephone
• Customer Name, Billing Address (First and Last Name, Address City, State, Zip Code, Country) Telephone

Alternatively, if you would rather go the manual route, you can use the Export function in the Sales menu. Here’s how:

1. Open the Sales menu in your Magento Admin and select Orders
2. Select CSV from the Export tab
3. Click Export to initiate the process

Magento to Shopify Migration Checklist: What To Do Once Migration Is Complete

Migrating your data from Magento to Shopify is one thing. Getting your new store launch-ready is a whole different ball game. Below is a migration checklist you can use to ensure your Shopify store is working as it should.

1. Test Your New Shopify Store

You’ll need to do a post-migration audit to identify any potential issues your new store might have. Here are a couple of questions to keep in mind:

• Is your new domain name active?
• Are the navigation links working as they should?
• Can you see all the products in the various catalogs?
• Is your onsite search function working properly?
• Have you verified the links in the headers, footers, menus, and site pages?

Once you’ve confirmed all the above, run a few test purchases just to make sure.

2. Search for the Apps You Need With Shopify Store

Explore the Shopify App Marketplace to find extensions that enhance the functionality of your new store. If you used Cart2Cart, your old integrations would have been migrated to the new platform. Nonetheless, there’s no harm in adding more apps that may previously have not been supported by Magento.

3. Invite Customers to Reactivate Their Accounts

Your customers are your top priority. This is why you should inform them that you are migrating/have migrated to a new platform. Invite them to reactivate their accounts and request them to let you know of any errors they might encounter while using the site. The Bulk Account Invite Sender is a nifty little feature you can use to send out bulk invites to all your customers.

Magento to Shopify Migration: FAQs

How to migrate Magento to Shopify

1. Connect your shopping carts by entering the URL of your Source Store (Magento) and then download and install the Connection Bridge
2. Choose the data you want to migrate
3. Specify any additional migration options
4. Match the various customer groups and order statuses with the newly created ones in Shopify
5. Run the Free Demo and then launch the Full Migration

See also: E-book "Magento to Shopify migration" target="_blank">E-book "Magento to Shopify migration".

How to Migrate Products From Magento to Shopify

If you’re using Cart2Cart, check the relevant boxes displayed on the migration wizard to select the product entities you want to migrate. On the other hand, if you’re doing it manually, use the Export function in Magento’s System menu, and then proceed as follows:

• Select the Products option in the drop-down list that appears
• Choose CSV Export File Format
• Pick the product attributes you want to transfer
• Click Continue

Why Migrate From Magento to Shopify

Magento is an open-source, self-hosted solution with a steep learning curve and loads of frontend and backend coding that only a web developer can do. On the other hand, Shopify is a fully-hosted solution with a beginner-friendly, highly-intuitive user interface that relies on a drag-and-drop website builder. There are dozens of free and premium professionally-designed templates available for download and thousands of apps to enhance your store’s functionality. It is the better option of the two eCommerce platforms.

How do I transfer domain from Magento to Shopify?

There are a few simple steps you need to take to transfer your domain to Shopify:

Go to Shopify admin, click on Online Store, and then Domains. On the domains page, click Transfer domain. Clicking transfer button will take you to a page where you can enter the domain you want to transfer to Shopify.

Click Next, and then Verify domain.

Note:

• If you get the message DOMAIN UNLOCKED, the domain is ready to transfer, and you can click Next to continue. If you get the message DOMAIN LOCKED, you’ll have to follow the domain unlocking process described above to unlock the domain.

• In the Verification code text box, enter the authorization code. Once done, click Next, and then Buy and transfer.

• Once you’ve completed these steps, you will receive a confirmation email from your domain provider to confirm the transfer. As mentioned earlier, once you’ve completed all the steps above, it can take up to 20 days for the transfer from your current domain provider to Shopify to complete. If you encounter any issues along the way, try to solve the problem by looking at Shopify’s extensive documentation or contacting Shopify support.

Final Thoughts

There you have it – everything you need to know about how to migrate Magento to Shopify. While Magento (Adobe Commerce) is a great eCommerce platform, it is built for coders. If you have no coding background or web development experience and would rather be hands-on when it comes to the management of your store, Shopify is the no-brainer option. Use this migration guide to help with your transition.

Sign up to Cart2Cart for a Free Demo today and discover how quick and easy it is to migrate your old store data to your new Shopify website

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