How Much Does a Shopify Migration Cost?

"How much does it cost to move to Shopify?" is one of the most common questions we get, and it's a fair one to be nervous about — migrations have a reputation for scope creep. The honest answer is a range, because it depends heavily on how many products you have, how much custom functionality you're carrying over, and how clean your existing data is. This post breaks that range down by store size so you can place yourself in it before you ask for a quote.

The short answer

For a typical small-to-mid-size store, a professionally handled migration — including data import, theme setup, redirects, and testing — runs $3,000 to $8,000. Larger or more complex stores with custom functionality, integrations, or thousands of SKUs run $15,000 to $50,000+. Add ongoing Shopify subscription costs ($29–$2,000+/month depending on plan) and app subscriptions ($50–$500+/month) on top of the one-time migration work.

If those numbers feel wide, that's because "migration" covers everything from "move 200 products and point the domain" to "replicate a custom subscription and loyalty system with ERP integration." The rest of this post narrows it down for your specific situation.

Cost by store size and complexity

These bands line up with what we cover in more depth in our WooCommerce to Shopify migration guide, which walks through what migrates automatically versus what needs manual rebuilding — worth reading if WooCommerce is your source platform specifically.

What actually drives the price up

Product count matters less than most people assume. What actually moves the number:

• Custom functionality with no Shopify-native equivalent. Subscription billing, membership tiers, complex bundle logic, or a bespoke configurator built for your old platform doesn't transfer — it gets rebuilt, either with a Shopify app or custom app development.
• Data quality. If your product catalogue has inconsistent categorisation, duplicate SKUs, or years of manual edits, someone has to clean it before import. This is invisible work that often gets underestimated in a quote and then discovered mid-project.
• Integrations. ERP systems, accounting software, custom POS setups, and warehouse management tools all need to be reconnected to Shopify, and each one is a separate scoping conversation.
• Design ambition. "Migrate my store" and "migrate my store and give it a from-scratch custom theme" are two different projects with two different price tags. Decide which one you're actually asking for.
• SEO preservation requirements. A store with meaningful organic traffic needs a full 301 redirect map, metadata preservation, and post-launch Search Console monitoring — all real work, and all worth paying for if you don't want to lose rankings.

The hidden costs nobody mentions upfront

Beyond the migration line item itself, budget for:

• App subscriptions stacking up. Reviews, upsells, email marketing, inventory — each Shopify app you add to replace old functionality is its own monthly line item, and they add up faster than people expect.
• Theme licensing or custom build cost. If you're not migrating with your old design intact (you generally aren't, since themes don't port between platforms), see our Shopify custom theme development cost guide for what that adds to your budget.
• Staff retraining time. Shopify's admin is different from most other platforms. Budget real hours for your team to get comfortable, not just the technical cutover.
• Post-launch monitoring. Redirect errors, missing metadata, and broken third-party integrations tend to surface in the first few weeks after launch, not before. A responsible migration includes time for this.

DIY versus hiring help

Shopify's built-in Store Importer is genuinely capable for straightforward catalogue migrations — if you have under a few hundred products, a standard theme, and no custom functionality to replicate, a motivated non-developer can do this themselves over a weekend for the cost of a Shopify subscription alone.

The calculation changes once you have real complexity: custom functionality to rebuild, a large catalogue where data errors are expensive to find manually, meaningful SEO to protect, or integrations that need someone who's done this before. At that point, the cost of a professional migration is usually smaller than the cost of getting it wrong — a broken redirect strategy alone can cost more in lost organic traffic than the entire migration would have cost to do properly the first time.

If you're weighing your options, see how Devmerx approaches store setup and migration — we quote a fixed price after a scoping call, not an hourly estimate that grows as we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a basic Shopify migration cost?

For a small store with a standard catalogue and no custom functionality, expect $3,000–$8,000 for a professionally handled migration, or effectively free (just your time and Shopify's subscription fee) if you do it yourself using Shopify's native import tools.

Is Shopify itself expensive compared to what I'm on now?

Shopify plans start at $29/month (Basic) and scale up through $79 and $299/month tiers, with Shopify Plus starting around $2,000/month for large, high-volume merchants. Compare this against what you currently spend on hosting, security, plugin licences, and maintenance — for many merchants coming from a self-hosted platform, the total cost of ownership is comparable or lower once you factor in reduced maintenance burden.

Can I migrate to Shopify for free?

The migration work itself can cost nothing beyond your time if your store is simple enough for Shopify's Store Importer to handle and you're comfortable rebuilding your theme yourself. You'll still pay the ongoing Shopify subscription and any apps you choose to install.

How long does a Shopify migration take?

Small stores typically take 1–3 weeks, mid-size stores 3–8 weeks, and large or complex stores 8–16 weeks, plus 1–2 weeks of post-launch monitoring in every case. Rushing the testing and redirect phases is the most common cause of launch-week problems.

What's the single biggest factor in migration cost?

Custom functionality with no off-the-shelf Shopify equivalent. A large but simple catalogue is usually cheaper to migrate than a small store with a bespoke subscription or configurator system, because the catalogue import is largely automated while custom features have to be rebuilt from scratch.