BigCommerce to Shopify migration: a practical guide

Why stores move from BigCommerce to Shopify, and when to stay

BigCommerce is capable, and most merchants who leave aren't escaping something broken. They're choosing what fits their team and plans better.

Common reasons to move

• Ecosystem. Shopify's app and theme marketplaces are large, so subscriptions, loyalty, bundles or reviews are usually an install rather than a custom build.
• Day-to-day editing. Many teams find Shopify's admin and theme editor easier for non-technical staff.
• Selling internationally. Shopify Markets lets one store set currency, language, domain, pricing and product availability per market.
• B2B on standard plans. Shopify B2B runs on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus, with the fullest feature set on Plus.

When staying is the better call

• Your catalogue leans heavily on modifiers, priced customisations or products with more than three variant options. Shopify can handle these, but only with restructuring or apps.
• You run several storefronts from one catalogue with BigCommerce Multi-Storefront and per-storefront price lists. Rebuilding that on Shopify is a redesign of how you sell, not a copy.
• The store converts well and the real goal is a fresh look. A redesign on BigCommerce is usually less work and less SEO risk than a replatform.

What moves, and what doesn't

Start with one hard fact: Shopify has no built-in importer for BigCommerce. Its own Store Migration app supports other platforms but doesn't list BigCommerce, and Shopify's admin can't import orders from a CSV. A BigCommerce move uses CSV exports and imports, a third-party migration app that reads BigCommerce's API, a custom script, or a mix.

Moves cleanly

• Products, variants, SKUs, prices, weights and stock.
• Product images, which Shopify fetches by URL during import, so they must be publicly reachable over https (up to 250 per product).
• Customers and addresses. Shopify records email and SMS marketing consent as yes or no, so only mark customers who opted in.
• SEO titles and meta descriptions. Shopify's product CSV takes up to 70 and 320 characters respectively.

Moves with planning

• Modifiers such as text fields, checkboxes, file uploads and priced add-ons. Shopify has no direct equivalent, and BigCommerce's CSV export leaves modifier options out, so they're read through the API or rebuilt.
• Custom fields, which become product metafields.
• Customer groups and price lists, which become customer tags, B2B companies and catalogues, or an app.
• Order history, blog posts and pages, through a migration app or Shopify's APIs.
• Reviews, exported from your reviews tool into a Shopify reviews app.
• Coupons and promotions, recreated as Shopify discounts. Rules don't always map one to one.
• Gift certificates, recreated as Shopify gift cards with their existing codes through a migration app or the gift card API. Do it just before launch: Shopify gift cards can be deactivated but not deleted.
• Store credit, which BigCommerce includes in its customer export. Shopify supports store credit on its current customer accounts, not legacy ones.
• Images inside descriptions and posts, which often still point at BigCommerce-hosted files. Move them into Shopify's Files.

Doesn't move

• Customer passwords. BigCommerce's customer export leaves them out, and Shopify can't migrate passwords from another platform. With Shopify's customer accounts, imported customers sign in with their email and a one-time code, so nobody needs a reset. Stores on deprecated legacy accounts must invite customers to set new passwords.
• Lifetime totals. Shopify ignores Total Spent and Total Orders in a customer import; they rebuild from imported orders.
• Your URLs. Shopify's URL patterns are fixed, so most addresses change.

Mapping your catalogue

BigCommerce has two kinds of product option, and the split drives most of the mapping. Variant options, such as size and colour, create variants with their own SKU and stock, and only use multiple-choice types. Modifier options customise a product without creating a variant, can use any type (text, number, checkbox, date, file upload) and can adjust price or weight. Shopify's product model only has the first kind (see BigCommerce's product options guide).

Products with more than three options

Shopify allows three options per product. If a product uses four, say size, colour, material and finish, merge two into one option (“Oak / Matt”), split the range into separate products, or, on Plus, use the Combined Listings app to present several products as one. Also check themes and apps: Shopify notes some third-party themes may not support more than 100 variants.

Custom fields to metafields

Custom fields are free-text name and value pairs, up to 200 per product. Tidy the names first (“Material”, “material” and “Materials” should become one field), then create a metafield definition for each with the right type. Metafields show through the theme editor, and single-line text, number, true/false and metaobject reference types can drive filters in Shopify's Search & Discovery app (up to 25 filters). One gotcha: the product CSV handles product metafields but not variant metafields.

Categories to collections

BigCommerce's modern CSV format references categories by ID, not name, so keep a category list to translate them. Shopify collections fill automatically by conditions such as tag, vendor or metafield, or by hand, and the newer collections model lets one collection include others, which suits parent categories.

Keeping your rankings: URLs and 301 redirects

BigCommerce lets each store choose its URL format: products at /product-name, /products/product-name or /category/product-name; categories at /category-name or /categories/category-name; pages at /page-name or /pages/page-name; or a custom pattern. Shopify's patterns are fixed: /products/handle, /collections/handle, /pages/handle and /blogs/blog-handle/post-handle. Most URLs will change, and every one that matters needs a permanent (301) redirect to its closest new equivalent.

Build the URL map

1. Collect every URL worth keeping: BigCommerce's XML sitemap at /xmlsitemap.php, a full crawl, top landing pages from Search Console and analytics, and pages with backlinks.
2. Add your existing BigCommerce redirects, pointed straight at the final Shopify URL.
3. Keep slugs identical where you can, so /oak-dining-table becomes /products/oak-dining-table and the map is largely mechanical.
4. Send brand pages to matching collections, and discontinued products to their closest category rather than the home page.

Import the redirects

In the Shopify admin, go to Content > Menus > URL redirects and import a CSV with “Redirect from” and “Redirect to” columns; Shopify's URL redirects guide links to a sample file. Use relative paths on your own domain. A store can hold 100,000 redirects, or 20,000,000 on Plus.

Two behaviours catch people out. A redirect only fires when the old path is otherwise broken, so a live Shopify page at the same address wins. And redirects from URLs with query strings may not work as expected, so map the clean path.

Apps and integrations

List everything connected to BigCommerce, from payments and 3PL to ERP, PIM, accounting, email, reviews, search, feeds and tax, and decide whether Shopify does it natively, the vendor has a Shopify version, or it needs replacing.

• ERP and inventory. Confirm the connector supports Shopify, then test it with real order types: B2B, split shipments, partial refunds and multi-location stock.
• B2B. Companies, catalogues (Shopify spells it catalogs), quantity rules, price breaks and net terms are on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus.Non-Plus plans get three B2B catalogues; company-specific catalogues, deposits and partial payments are Plus only. Check Shopify's B2B features by plan before mapping customer groups and price lists.
• Several storefronts. Markets covers multiple currencies and languages in one store. Plus includes up to ten stores on one contract, but expansion stores must extend the main brand and don't share products or inventory.
• Options apps. If you're replacing modifiers, choose the app early; it shapes your variants and theme.
• Migration tools. LitExtension Store Migration, Matrixify and Cart2Cart Store Migration list BigCommerce as a source. Coverage differs, so run a test migration and check the output first.
• Very large catalogues. Once a store holds 500,000 variants, Shopify allows only 10,000 new variants a day through its APIs, except on Plus.

A step-by-step migration plan

1. Audit. Count products, variants, customers, orders, pages and URLs. List every modifier, custom field, customer group, price list and integration, and agree what stays behind.
2. Back up BigCommerce. Export products, customers and orders to CSV, even if an app does the migration.
3. Set up Shopify in private mode. New stores start password-protected (Online Store > Preferences). Configure payments, tax, shipping, markets and notifications.
4. Build the data model. Create metafield definitions, collections and any B2B catalogues before importing products.
5. Import products, then customers, then orders. Start with a small batch. Product and customer CSVs are capped at 15 MB each. Turn off staff new-order notifications before importing orders.
6. Build the theme: product templates for options and metafields, collection filters, pages and the blog.
7. Reconnect apps and integrations against the test store.
8. Test. Compare record counts, check your most complex products, and place test orders covering discounts, guest and logged-in checkout, every payment method, shipping, tax and refunds.
9. Load and test the redirects.
10. Prepare the cut-over. Lower your domain's TTL about a week ahead (Shopify's Plus launch checklist suggests 300 seconds). After the cut-off, migrate orders and customers created since the main import, then gift card balances.
11. Launch. Update DNS as Shopify's domain guide describes (an A record to 23.227.38.65, an AAAA record, and a www CNAME to shops.myshopify.com), set the primary domain and leave private mode. DNS can take up to 48 hours to settle.

Launch day and the first 30 days

On launch day

• Crawl your old URL list: each should give one 301 to a page that loads.
• Submit Shopify's sitemap (yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml) in Google Search Console; it can't be read while the store is private.
• Check analytics, ad conversion tracking and product feeds.
• Place a real order with a real card, then refund it.
• Email account holders to explain the new sign-in.

The first 30 days

• Check Search Console's page indexing report for “Not found (404)” pages daily in week one, then weekly, and redirect anything still requested.
• Compare rankings and organic landing pages with a pre-launch baseline. Some movement is normal during recrawling; a sustained drop on a group of pages often means a missing or wrong redirect.
• Watch Merchant Center for disapproved products.
• Keep redirects permanently; Google advises at least a year.
• Keep your BigCommerce exports, and don't close the account until nothing else needs downloading.

What drives cost and timeline

Complexity matters more than product count. The main drivers:

• Catalogue structure: products and variants, items over three options, modifiers and custom fields.
• Data to move: years of orders, reviews, blog content, store credit and gift cards.
• Pricing and B2B: customer groups, price lists or B2B Edition, and their Shopify equivalents.
• Storefronts: one store using Markets, or several stores.
• Integrations and apps: each ERP, PIM, 3PL or accounting link to rebuild and test, plus any custom features.
• Design: adapting a Shopify theme or a custom design and build.
• Data quality and SEO: messy attributes, broken images and a large redirect map.

Timelines depend as much on decisions as on build work. Settle modifiers, B2B pricing and app choices early, launch outside your busiest season, and freeze catalogue and content changes around cut-over.

Questions