Migrating from Magento to Shopify

There are multiple ways to migrate your online store from Magento to Shopify. While the choice of one over the other boils down to preference, some methods are more foolproof than others as far as the risk of data loss goes. Using an automated to Shopify migration service like Cart2Cart isn't just easier and more convenient; it guarantees safe data migration without losing precious customer, order, or product data in the process.

Watch our video tutorial to see how easy it is to automatically migrate from Magento to your Shopify account with the help of the Cart2Cart migration tool:

Here’s how to migrate from Magento to Shopify in a few easy steps:

1. Connect your source and target shopping carts.
2. Highlight the data you want to transfer and specify any additional migration options you would like to integrate into the process.
3. Map the various customer groups you had in your store and the varying statuses of existing orders.
4. Run the free demo to launch the Full Migration.

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.

Step 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.

Step 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

Step 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.

Step 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.

Step 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.