How much does a Shopify migration cost? (real numbers 2026)

TL;DR

A WooCommerce-to-Shopify migration for a typical small Canadian store runs $2,800-$5,000 CAD done right, with 3-6 weeks of work. BigCommerce migrations land in the same range. Magento and headless rebuilds run $8,000-$25,000+. The cost isn’t in moving the data, it’s in preserving SEO, rebuilding broken app dependencies, and not torching your search traffic on launch day.

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What you’re actually paying for in a migration

People hear “migration” and picture a button that copies the store across. That isn’t what’s happening. A real Shopify migration is a rebuild of your storefront, a careful data export and re-import, and a one-shot SEO transfer that has to work on the first try.

Here’s where the money goes on a typical project:

• Storefront rebuild — your old theme doesn’t come with you. You’re building a new Shopify theme (or installing and customizing a paid one).
• Product, customer, and order import — CSV exports, mapping, image migration, variant restructuring.
• 301 redirect map — every old URL has to point to its new equivalent. Miss this and Google drops you.
• App audit and replacement — WooCommerce plugins don’t run on Shopify. You need equivalent apps, and the new apps cost monthly.
• Payment provider switch — usually moving to Shopify Payments or keeping Stripe.
• Shipping, tax, and checkout reconfiguration — Canada Post zones, GST/HST/PST, real-time rates.
• QA, staging review, launch night — the part nobody quotes for but takes 20% of the timeline.

Real cost ranges by source platform (2026 CAD)

What a migration costs depends mostly on where you are leaving from, because that decides how much of the data and the behaviour has to be rebuilt rather than moved. The ranges below are what studios in the region quote, and what we quote for this work.

• WooCommerce to Shopify — $2,800 to $5,000 for stores with under 500 products and standard features. Add $1,000-$2,000 if you have heavy ACF custom fields or a complex variant structure.
• BigCommerce to Shopify — $3,000 to $5,500. Cleaner data export than WooCommerce, but BigCommerce theme logic is more involved to recreate.
• Wix or Squarespace to Shopify — $2,400 to $4,200. Less data complexity, but you usually rebuild more of the design because exports are limited.
• Magento to Shopify — $8,000 to $20,000+. Magento stores tend to have years of customization, complex catalogs, and B2B pricing rules that don’t map cleanly.
• Custom-built site to Shopify — $6,000 to $25,000. Wildly variable. Depends entirely on what the previous developer did.

Our Growth tier at $4,900 CAD covers most WooCommerce and BigCommerce migrations of small-to-mid stores end to end.

The SEO preservation piece (this is where projects go wrong)

If you’ve ranked for anything, you cannot launch without a redirect map. We’ve audited migrations after the fact where the previous agency moved a store and the client lost 60-80% of organic traffic in two weeks. That damage is recoverable but it takes 3-6 months and costs more than doing it right the first time.

The non-negotiables:

• 301 redirects from every old URL — collections, products, blog posts, category pages, pagination.
• Match URL structure where possible — Shopify forces /products/ and /collections/ prefixes, so a 1:1 match isn’t always possible, but every slug should be preserved.
• Preserve title tags and meta descriptions — export from the old CMS, re-import into Shopify SEO fields.
• Submit a new sitemap to Google Search Console on launch day — not the next morning.
• Keep the old site live on a subdomain for 48 hours — gives you a rollback path if something breaks.

Customer and order history import (what actually transfers)

Shopify lets you import customers and historical orders, but with caveats. Customer passwords don’t transfer (security reasons). Customers get prompted to set a new password on first login. Order history imports as “external” — you can see it, but you can’t reprint shipping labels or refund through Shopify for those orders.

If you have an active subscription product on the old store, the migration gets harder. Recharge and Bold Subscriptions both have import tooling, but expect 4-8 hours of manual reconciliation per 100 active subscribers.

The app cost shift nobody tells you about

The bill changes shape when you move. A WooCommerce store usually pays one hosting invoice plus one time plugin purchases. On Shopify you pay monthly for the platform and monthly again for most apps, so a store that looked cheaper to run can cost more every month after the move.

A typical small Shopify store ends up at $80-$180/month in app subscriptions after migration. The most common adds:

• Reviews app — Judge.me ($0-$15) or Yotpo ($15-$50)
• Email + SMS — Klaviyo ($30-$200 depending on list size)
• Shipping — ShipStation or Easyship ($15-$50)
• Wishlist or quick-buy features — Smart Wishlist or similar ($5-$15)
• Bundle/upsell — Shopify Bundles (free) or third-party ($15-$30)

Factor this into your year-one budget. A store paying $0/month in plugins on WooCommerce is going to feel the Shopify subscription stack.

Typical timeline: 3-6 weeks

A migration is not one long task, it is a sequence with a fixed order, and each stage has to finish before the next can start honestly. The schedule below is what a mid sized store actually takes, from the first export to the day the redirects go live.

• Week 1 — Discovery, content audit, theme decision, data export from old platform.
• Week 2 — Theme build on Shopify staging, product import, collection setup.
• Week 3 — Payment + shipping + tax config, app installs, customer import.
• Week 4 — SEO transfer (redirects, meta, sitemap prep), QA pass, content review with client.
• Week 5 — Revisions, training, launch prep, DNS staged.
• Week 6 — Launch night, redirect verification, post-launch monitoring.

When a migration costs more than a fresh build

Sometimes moving the old store is the expensive option. If the existing site carries years of custom work, a catalogue nobody has tidied, or app behaviour that has to be recreated from scratch, rebuilding is cheaper than porting. The conditions below are the ones that tip it.

• Heavy custom checkout logic that won’t transfer
• Hundreds of products with inconsistent or missing data
• A theme nobody can find the source files for
• SEO that isn’t ranking anyway

…then a fresh build is often cheaper than a migration. Migrating bad data is more work than starting clean. We’ll tell you straight in discovery which path saves you money.

If a fresh build turns out to be the cheaper path, what a website costs in Canada sets out the build brackets, and Shopify vs WooCommerce for Canadian stores helps if you are rethinking the platform as well.

Hidden costs to ask about before signing

Several real costs in a migration are routinely left out of the quote, and each one is worth asking about in writing before you sign. Image re optimisation, theme licensing, app rebuilds and the redirect map all take real hours. The list below names them one at a time.

• Image re-optimization — Shopify serves images well but most migrated images are oversized. Budget $300-$600 for a proper pass.
• Theme licensing — premium themes are $300-$500 one-time and almost always worth it over a free theme.
• Custom font licensing — if your brand uses a paid font, you need a web license for Shopify.
• Logo and brand asset prep — if your old site has rasterized logos at weird sizes, plan a brand asset refresh.
• Translation/multi-currency — Shopify Markets handles this well now, but setup is 4-8 hours billable.
• Klaviyo or email tool migration — list export, flow rebuild. Often $500-$1,500 on top.

What to look for in a Shopify migration quote

An honest migration quote names the things that can go wrong and prices them. It should say who writes the redirect map, what happens to customer and order history, which app behaviour is being rebuilt, and who is accountable on launch day. The list below is what to insist on.

• Number of products, collections, and pages being migrated
• Whether order and customer history is in scope
• Whether a 301 redirect map is included (it should be)
• App audit and recommendations
• Number of design revision rounds
• Training session(s) for the team
• Post-launch support window (usually 14-30 days)

If a quote is silent on redirects or training, that’s a red flag. It means it’s not in scope and you’ll get a change order later.

Frequently asked questions

These are the questions owners ask us before committing to a migration, answered with the same ranges as the rest of this page. The short version is that the data moves easily and the search traffic does not, which is why the redirect map is the line item to watch.

Can I migrate to Shopify myself?

You can. Shopify’s free Store Importer handles WooCommerce and BigCommerce data with reasonable accuracy. What you can’t easily DIY is the SEO transfer, theme rebuild, and app reconfiguration. Most DIY migrations land somewhere — they just usually lose 30-50% of organic traffic in the process.

How long does a Shopify migration take if I’m in a hurry?

Three weeks is the realistic floor for a small store with content ready on day one. Anything faster usually means corners cut on QA or SEO.

Will my Google rankings survive?

If the redirect map is complete and the new theme is fast, you typically see a 2-4 week dip of 10-20% during reindexing, then recovery and often a small lift from the speed gains. If redirects are missed, the drop is steeper and recovery takes months.

Do I have to use Shopify Payments?

No. You can keep Stripe, PayPal, or another processor. Shopify charges an additional 0.5-2% transaction fee when you don’t use Shopify Payments, which is usually worth working into the math.

Will my apps and integrations still work?

Your WooCommerce plugins won’t run on Shopify. There’s a Shopify-app equivalent for most things — Klaviyo, ShipStation, Judge.me reviews, etc. — but you’ll be rebuilding email flows, review widgets, and any custom logic from scratch.

What about my domain and email?

Your domain stays where it is. We point DNS at Shopify on launch night. Email (hosted somewhere else like Google Workspace) is unaffected.

Can I migrate a B2B store with custom pricing?

Yes, with Shopify Plus or the Shopify B2B catalogue feature. This adds complexity and usually pushes a project into the Signature tier ($9,900+ CAD).

What’s the cheapest honest Shopify migration?

For a small store under 50 products with no order history requirement, $2,400 (our Launch tier) covers a clean migration with redirects and training. Anything quoted under $1,500 is almost certainly skipping the SEO transfer.

What to do next

If you’re sitting on a WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or Magento store and you’ve been quoted somewhere between $1,500 and $15,000 for a migration, the right move is to get the quote in writing with the line items above and ask a second agency for a sanity check.

We do migration discovery calls free. We’ll tell you whether your store is a $2,400 job, a $4,900 job, or one of those cases where a fresh build saves money. Book a discovery call or look at our tier breakdown on the pricing page.