How to Migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus: Complete 2025 Guide

More eCommerce brands are moving from Magento to Shopify Plus than ever before.

Why? Because Shopify offers faster performance, easier management, and a growing ecosystem of tools — with none of the dev headaches.

But a successful migration takes more than just copying product data.

It means preserving what works — and rethinking what doesn’t.

This guide covers everything you need to migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus without breaking SEO, shipping, or customer experience.

🚚 Why Brands Leave Magento

Magento is powerful — but comes with complexity:

• Costly dev resources

• Slow site speed (without major optimisation)

• Plugin conflicts and upgrade issues

• Custom delivery logic and shipping rules that often break

• Poor UX at checkout

Shopify Plus offers:

• Fast, reliable performance

• Easy theme customisation

• Built-in scalability

• Native support for modern delivery, app, and checkout experiences

🛠️ What You’ll Need to Migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus

Product Data
– Include names, SKUs, variants, prices, and any relevant metafields

Categories → Collections
– Shopify uses collections (not categories) to organise products, so you’ll need to remap your taxonomy accordingly

Theme Design & UX
– You can recreate your existing Magento storefront or take the opportunity to refresh the design using Shopify’s theme architecture

Media Assets
– Migrate product photos, homepage banners, icons, and other visuals

Customer Accounts
– Export/import customer data, or send reset invites at launch for a smoother transition

Order History
– Useful for analytics, reporting, and customer continuity — Shopify supports historical order import

SEO: URLs, Redirects, Meta
– Preserve search rankings with proper 301 redirects and on-page SEO setup

Payment & Tax Setup
– Configure Shopify Payments or your preferred gateway, and match Magento’s tax rules using Shopify’s tax settings

Delivery & Shipping Logic
– Shopify doesn’t replicate Magento’s native logic — you’ll need to rebuild shipping/delivery rules using Shopify-native tools or apps like Flare

Integrations
– Reconnect critical systems (ERP, WMS, CRM, subscriptions, helpdesk) via apps or custom integrations

🧩 What’s Different Between Magento and Shopify Plus?

Magento and Shopify don’t match feature-for-feature — here are some key structural differences to plan for:

Navigation
– Magento uses category-based navigation
– Shopify uses collection and tag-based navigation

Theme Development
– Magento themes are fully custom and dev-heavy
– Shopify offers customisable themes via Liquid and a visual Theme Editor

Shipping Rules
– Magento supports complex, rule-based shipping logic
– Shopify uses Shipping Profiles and relies on third-party apps for advanced rules (e.g. Flare for delivery date logic)

Checkout Customisation
– Magento allows deep customisation by default
– Shopify Plus unlocks Checkout Extensibility (apps and logic injected via Blocks)

Workflows
– Magento often relies on developers for changes
– Shopify offers a more low-code, app-powered approach (e.g. Recharge, ShipStation, Flare)

🚧 Where Most Migrations Break

Even well-planned migrations fail on these points:

• Broken SEO: Missing redirects, lost meta titles/descriptions

• Unmatched UX: Poor theme replication or mobile responsiveness

• Shipping Issues: Inaccurate delivery dates, mismatched rules

• App Gaps: No equivalent for Magento plugins (esp. shipping logic, ZIP rules)

Let’s go deeper on the delivery gap…

📦 How to Rebuild Delivery Logic in Shopify (The Shipping Trap)

Many Magento brands rely on:

• ShipperHQ

• Custom-coded delivery calendars

• Country-specific shipping rules

But these setups don’t port over cleanly to Shopify.

On Shopify Plus, you’ll need to rebuild your delivery and shipping logic — using Shopify’s native shipping profiles or trusted apps.

🧠 Enter Flare

Flare is a powerful delivery logic engine used by food, furniture, gifting and subscription brands that migrate from Magento.

With Flare, you can:

• Add a delivery date picker to the cart or checkout

• Show accurate dates based on product, country, shipping method, or ZIP code

• Set cutoffs, lead times, surcharges, and blackout dates

• Support mixed baskets (e.g. perishable + ambient)

• Sync with carriers (UPS, FedEx) or WMS platforms

🛠️ Case Study: Fine Food Specialists

Migrated from Magento and ShipperHQ to Shopify Plus and Flare — saving £21,000+ while gaining more control over delivery windows by ZIP code, product type, and carrier.

✅ Shopify Plus Migration Checklist

Before You Migrate:

• Audit your current store (what’s custom, what’s reusable)

• Map out critical workflows (cart, checkout, shipping, tagging)

• List all apps and integrations

• Identify performance or UX pain points to solve in the new build

During Migration:

• Export/import data (products, customers, orders)

• Rebuild theme or choose a Shopify 2.0 template

• Recreate navigation, collections, and filters

• Set up redirects and test SEO

• Rebuild shipping & delivery logic (e.g. with Flare)

• Test cart and checkout flows end-to-end

Post Launch:

• Monitor site speed, SEO, and bounce rates

• Track conversion by device and traffic source

• Review support tickets for delivery issues

• Optimise shipping rates and cutoffs based on behavior

🧪 Pro Tip: Run a Soft Launch

Before going fully live:

• Set a password on the new store

• Test with internal orders and edge cases

• Invite power customers to beta test

• Review every step of the customer journey (especially delivery logic!)

🚀 Ready to Migrate?

Migrating from Magento to Shopify Plus is a big move — but a high-leverage one.

Make sure your new store runs faster, converts better, and supports growth across countries, products, and delivery requirements.

Want help rebuilding delivery logic?

→ Explore Flare for Shopify Plus
→ Read the Fine Food Specialists migration case study