TL;DR
A Shopify migration costs $20,000 to $30,000 for a simple catalog port, $30,000 to $60,000 for mid-market work with a custom theme and ERP integration, and $75,000 to $150,000 or more for an enterprise Plus rebuild. Below $20,000, a migration tool plus your own redirect work is often genuinely sufficient.
- SKU count is the wrong number. Shopify caps products at three options each. What drives cost is what share of your catalog needs a fourth option axis.
- Your source platform matters more than your size. Magento is the most expensive to leave. Wix is the most commonly underquoted, because customer accounts, orders and blog content have no admin export at all.
- Redirect mapping is the line item to protect. It is the first thing cut when a quote gets negotiated down, and incomplete mapping is what costs 20 to 50% of organic traffic.
- Hold back 15 to 20% of the quote for what surfaces in month two.
- Four numbers to bring to any quote: products by option count, URLs with traffic or backlinks, your integration list, and how much order history you actually need.
Every cost guide tells you to count your SKUs. That is the wrong number. Across 75+ replatforms from nine source platforms since 2018, the two things that actually move a migration quote are which platform you are leaving and how many product options your catalog needs. This guide gives both, with the specific technical constraint per platform that no other cost guide names.
How much does a Shopify migration cost?
A Shopify migration costs $20,000 to $30,000 for a simple catalog and theme port, $30,000 to $60,000 for mid-market work with a custom theme and ERP integration, and $75,000 to $150,000 or more for an enterprise Shopify Plus rebuild. Below $20,000, an automated migration tool plus your own redirect work is often genuinely sufficient. Above it, the price is set by integration count and source-platform quirks rather than catalog size.
| Tier | Cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Simple: catalog and theme port | $20,000–$30,000 | 8–12 weeks |
| Mid-market: custom theme, light B2B, ERP | $30,000–$60,000 | 12–18 weeks |
| Enterprise: Shopify Plus rebuild | $75,000–$150,000+ | 16–24 weeks |
Most projects land in the mid-market tier. No neutral body publishes Shopify migration rates, so treat every figure here and elsewhere as a band rather than a quote.
Why SKU count is the wrong number
Catalog size predicts cost badly, because Shopify caps products at three options each, with up to 2,048 variants. A 5,000-product catalog where everything has two options imports cleanly. A 500-product catalog where 60% need four option axes requires restructuring every one of them.
That restructuring is manual, product by product, and it is the single most common source of scope change mid-project.
Run this audit before requesting any quote. Export your catalog. Count products by how many option axes they use. Then report the percentage needing four or more.
No cost guide asks for this number. Every agency quoting you should.
What your source platform actually costs you
Presta's guide notes that SaaS platforms run 30 to 40% cheaper to leave than self-hosted ones. That is directionally right, and it does not tell you why. Here is the specific constraint per platform, from our own replatforms.
| Leaving | The cost driver nobody names | Effect on quote |
|---|---|---|
| Magento / Adobe Commerce | Configurable products with four or more attributes hit Shopify's three-option ceiling. The url_rewrite table holds every historic URL and is the most commonly ignored asset in the project. |
Highest |
| WooCommerce | Page-builder layouts (Elementor, Divi) do not export. Metadata sits in Yoast's database, not the product export. Plugins rarely map one-to-one onto apps. | High |
| Wix | Customer accounts, order history, blog posts and static pages have no admin export at all. Each requires API extraction or scraping rendered pages. | High, and usually underquoted |
| BigCommerce | Product modifiers have no Shopify equivalent. They become line-item properties or custom app work. URLs are free-form, so there is no pattern to map from. | Medium |
| Volusion | CSV exports use column names that do not match Shopify's import template. Product images sit at CDN URLs outside the product export. | Medium |
| Squarespace | Permits six option types against Shopify's three. Product exports cap at 2,000 items per batch. Order history export is partial. | Low to medium |
Two rows are worth pausing on.
Wix is the one most often underquoted. Merchants assume a simple platform means a simple exit. It has the worst export path of any platform on this list, and an agency that has not migrated off Wix will discover that in week three of your project.
Magento is genuinely the most expensive, and the reason is not size. It is the combination of attribute depth against Shopify's option ceiling, plus extensions that need replacing rather than porting.
Say It With A Condom, on our Shopify Partner Directory profile:
The project involved migrating from Magento, cleaning up years of technical debt, and setting up a new Shopify experience that finally feels clean, fast, and modern.
Say It With A Condom
“Years of technical debt” is the Magento premium in a phrase. It is rarely the catalog that costs money.
Ask any agency you are evaluating to name the failure mode of your specific platform. If they cannot, they have not run enough of them.
The redirect map, and why it is the line item to protect
Redirect mapping is where migrations either hold their rankings or do not, and it is the first thing cut when a quote gets negotiated down. Competing guides warn that broken redirects cost 20 to 50% of organic traffic. That is the right warning. The useful question is how the work gets scoped.
A complete map is built from three sources combined, not one: a live crawl of the current site, 12 months of Google Search Console data, and your platform's historic URL table. A crawl alone misses URLs that are no longer linked but still ranking and still carrying backlinks.
Wild Planet Foods, describing the same discipline:
SOLO MEDIA GROUP helped see me through a transition from WordPress to Shopify, the addition and modification of our subscription platform, SEO crawls and fixes, multi-agency brainstorming sessions, as well as the development of new buildout for our Site.
Wild Planet Foods
Redirect ceilings matter at scale. Shopify allows 100,000 URL redirects on standard plans and 20,000,000 on Shopify Plus. Most stores never approach either. Large Magento catalogs with historic URL rewrites sometimes do.
Ask for the number. “What was the largest redirect map you have built?” Anyone who has run a real migration knows it immediately. It is the best single proxy for whether an agency treats SEO preservation as scope or as an upsell.
The four routes, and what each actually buys
Migration tools — roughly $50 to $500, one time. LitExtension and Cart2Cart price by record count. They move products, customers and orders mechanically and they do it well. They do not rebuild your theme, reconnect your apps, or map a single URL.
Data migration service — roughly $1,500 to $5,000. Someone runs the tool for you and validates the output. Still data only.
Freelancer or small agency — roughly $2,500 to $12,000. Genuinely sufficient for a clean catalog with no integrations and low organic traffic. We will tell you if that describes you.
Full replatform — $20,000 and up. Design, custom development, integration rebuilds, redirect strategy, testing and post-launch support. See Shopify Plus migration services.
The honest test. If you have a simple catalog, no custom functionality and no integrations, a tool plus your own redirect work covers it. If you have connected systems or organic traffic worth protecting, the tool moves your data and leaves you the hard 80% of the project.
Costs that appear after the quote
Reserve 15 to 20% of the base quote for post-launch work. On a $50,000 project that is $7,500 to $10,000. This is the most consistently useful number in the category, and several competing guides publish it, correctly.
Five things that show up in month two:
- Passwords. Customer passwords cannot be migrated from any platform, so Shopify sends account activation invitations instead. Plan that email as a launch communication or you generate support volume on day one.
- Order ID mismatches. Most tools can preserve order IDs, but not all do by default. Mismatched IDs break accounting reconciliation. Confirm before you start.
- App subscriptions. A stack that accumulated over years on the old platform gets rebuilt, and the monthly total rarely comes down.
- Integration re-authentication. Every ERP, 3PL, CRM and accounting connection needs re-establishing, and each has its own vendor timeline.
- Core Web Vitals lag. Field data runs on a 28-day rolling window, so a speed improvement deployed at launch will not appear in reporting for about a month. Anyone reporting a Core Web Vitals win in week one is showing you lab numbers.
Micaela Shaw of Time4Learning:
We really appreciate Solo Media's continued partnership. The team has been persistent and helpful throughout our migration to Shopify.
Micaela Shaw, Time4Learning
“Throughout” is the operative word. The transfer is a couple of weeks. The relationship that catches what surfaces afterwards is the part worth budgeting for.
What we charge, and what our own data says
Our rate is $150 per hour. Hour blocks from 10 hours at $1,500. Retainers from 20 hours or $3,000 a month. Full replatforms from $20,000, as a line-item estimate so you can drop scope you do not need.
One thing our independent review data shows is worth stating plainly. Client-reported project costs on our Clutch profile cluster between $5,000 and $20,000 — below our published replatform floor. That is not a discrepancy. It reflects that a large share of our work is scoped engagements, audits and retainer engineering rather than full replatforms. If your project is a defined fix rather than a rebuild, the hour block is the right entry point and we will say so.
Full breakdown including Shopify's own platform fees: Shopify Plus cost.
Leading Shopify agency helping DTC brands scale
As one of the top Shopify agencies working with mid-market and enterprise DTC merchants, Solo Media Group helps brands unlock the full potential of the platform. We build, migrate and optimize stores for companies where ecommerce is the primary revenue channel, not a side channel.
Since 2018 we have delivered 75+ replatforms and custom builds, and we hold Platinum status, the top tier of Shopify's Service Track. One in-house team handles strategy, design and engineering from first call to post-launch support.
We are rated 4.9 from 48 reviews on Clutch and 5.0 from 38 reviews on Shopify's own Partner Directory. Client-reported outcomes on Clutch include a PageSpeed score rising from 47 to 99.
Before you request a quote
Four numbers. Any agency that does not ask for them has not scoped your project.
- Products by option count. What percentage need four or more axes?
- URLs with traffic or backlinks. Pull 12 months from Search Console.
- Integration list. ERP, 3PL, CRM, subscriptions, reviews, feeds.
- Order history depth. How many years do you genuinely need migrated?
Bring those four and a quote becomes an estimate rather than a guess.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a Shopify migration cost?
$20,000 to $30,000 for a simple catalog and theme port, $30,000 to $60,000 for mid-market work with a custom theme and ERP integration, and $75,000 upward for an enterprise Plus rebuild. Below $20,000, an automated tool plus your own redirect work is often sufficient.
What is the single biggest cost driver?
Product option depth, not SKU count. Shopify caps products at three options each. A catalog where more than 20% of products need four or more axes requires restructuring, and that becomes its own workstream.
Which platform is most expensive to migrate from?
Magento and Adobe Commerce, because configurable products with deep attribute sets collide with Shopify's three-option limit and extensions need replacing rather than porting. Wix is the most commonly underquoted, because customer accounts, order history and blog content have no admin export at all.
Will I lose organic traffic?
Only if redirects are handled badly. Published estimates put losses at 20 to 50% where mapping was incomplete. A map built from a crawl, 12 months of Search Console data and your platform's historic URL table, live at cutover, is what prevents it.
How much should I hold back for post-launch?
Fifteen to twenty percent of the base quote. On a $50,000 project that is $7,500 to $10,000, covering bug fixes, data cleanup and integration issues that surface in the first month.
Do customer passwords migrate?
No, not from any platform. Passwords are stored hashed rather than in readable form. Shopify sends account activation invitations instead, and that email should be planned as part of launch.
How long does a Shopify migration take?
Eight to twelve weeks for a straightforward store, twelve to eighteen for mid-market with integrations, sixteen to twenty-four for an enterprise Plus rebuild. Judge it on the first month after cutover rather than on the transfer itself.
Can I migrate to Shopify myself?
Yes, if your catalog is small, your product options are simple, you have no integrations and little organic traffic to protect. A migration tool runs $50 to $500. What you cannot buy cheaply is a redirect map, and that is the part that protects your rankings.
