Can I keep my URLs when moving from Magento to Shopify?

Not exactly. Shopify puts products under /products/ and collections under /collections/, so old Magento URLs need permanent redirects to the new ones. Shopify supports importing redirects in bulk by CSV.

Do customer passwords transfer from Magento to Shopify?

No. Shopify says passwords can't be migrated by CSV, so customers are invited to activate their accounts again. Shopify's newer customer accounts use one-time email codes instead of passwords.

How long does a Magento to Shopify migration take?

As a planning assumption, 8 to 12 weeks for a small, simple store and three to six months for a mid-sized store with integrations. B2B and multi-store projects take longer.

Is WooCommerce good enough to replace Magento?

For small and medium catalogues, especially content-led shops, yes. For heavy B2B, multi-store or very large catalogues, Magento or Shopify Plus is often the better fit.

Should I leave Magento because support is ending?

Not on that basis alone. Upgrading to a supported release puts you back on security patches; leave when Magento no longer fits the business. The Magento support checker shows where your version stands.

Guides

Leaving Magento: Shopify or WooCommerce?

What moves cleanly off Magento 2 and Adobe Commerce, what has to be rebuilt, when Shopify or WooCommerce fits, and when staying put is the better call.

By Ryan Kirkaldy · 3 October 2026 · 7 min read

If you’re leaving Magento, choose Shopify when your retail model is conventional and you want to stop running servers, and WooCommerce when you want to own the code and data and your catalogue is modest. Choose neither until you’ve listed what your current store actually does, because that list decides the cost. For a typical mid-sized store, plan on three to six months from signed brief to launch, longer with B2B or heavy integrations.

This guide is about the move itself: what carries across, what doesn’t, and how to brief it. If you’re still deciding whether to move at all, start with the Magento end of support guide, which covers Adobe’s dates and the option of upgrading instead.

What migrates cleanly, and what doesn’t

A replatform is a rebuild with a data migration attached, not a copy. Products, categories, customers and order history all move, with effort. Almost everything that makes your store yours (custom pricing rules, checkout tweaks, integrations, odd admin workflows) gets rebuilt or replaced.

Item	Moving to Shopify	Moving to WooCommerce
Products and categories	Moves well with a migration app or API import. Configurable products become products with variants; complex configurables need mapping out first	Moves well. Configurable products map to variable products. Attribute sets need tidying first
URLs	Change. Products sit under /products/ and categories under /collections/, fixed paths you can’t alter. Every old URL needs a redirect	Change unless you deliberately rebuild the old structure. Permalinks are flexible, but the default patterns differ from Magento’s
Customer passwords	Don’t move. Shopify says passwords can’t be migrated by CSV; customers are invited to set up their accounts again	Usually don’t move. Some migration tools can carry the old password format across with a plugin; test it before relying on it
Order history	Not via the customer CSV. Historical orders come across through a migration app or the API, and arrive as records, not live orders	Moves with migration tools, including statuses and line items
B2B pricing	Basic, Grow and Advanced allow up to three active B2B catalogues. Company-specific catalogues need Shopify Plus	Needs extensions for trade accounts and customer-specific prices. Fine for simple tiers, harder for contract pricing
Extensions and integrations	Replaced by apps or rebuilt. Each one is a separate decision and often a monthly fee	Replaced by plugins or rebuilt. More can be custom-built because you own the code
Custom checkout logic	The most constrained area. Deeper checkout customisation is a Plus feature	Fully changeable, at the cost of owning and testing it

URLs, redirects and search traffic

This is where replatforms quietly lose money. Magento URLs usually end in .html and follow your category structure; neither platform will reproduce them by default. Every product, category and content page that has search traffic or backlinks needs a one-to-one permanent redirect to its new home, not a blanket redirect to the homepage.

Shopify lets you import redirects by CSV, up to 100,000 on standard plans and 20 million on Plus, which covers most catalogues. The work isn’t the import. It’s building the map: crawling the old site, pulling the pages that earn traffic from Search Console, matching each to its new URL, then checking the redirects work on launch day and watching for 404 errors for weeks after.

Carry across page titles, meta descriptions, product copy and structured data too. A new platform with thinner content will lose rankings regardless of how good the redirects are.

Customer passwords

Plan for every customer to reset their password, and write the email before launch. On Shopify, the newer customer accounts sign in with a one-time code sent by email rather than a password, which removes some of the pain: there’s nothing to reset. On WooCommerce, ask your migration supplier whether they can carry passwords across, and see a test login work before you believe it.

When Shopify fits

Shopify fits when you sell to consumers, your catalogue is conventional, and you’d rather pay a monthly fee than run hosting, security patches and upgrades. For a business that has spent years paying for Magento patching, that last point is often the whole case.

Your products are simple or have a manageable number of variants.
Your integrations are common ones (accounting, couriers, marketplaces, email) with established apps.
Your checkout is standard. Promotions and discounts are normal ones.
B2B is modest, or you’re prepared to budget for Plus.

Watch the running costs. Plans are only part of it: apps add up, and Shopify charges an extra fee if you use a payment provider other than its own. The platform comparison sets out the ownership trade-off, and I’ve written a separate guide on what Shopify and WooCommerce really cost to run. Theme and integration work is in my scope; deep custom Shopify app development I bring in from specialists and manage.

When WooCommerce fits

WooCommerce fits when you want to own the code, the data and the hosting, your catalogue is small to medium, and content (guides, recipes, buying advice) matters as much as the shop. There’s no platform fee and no penalty for choosing your own payment provider.

You have unusual requirements that would mean paying for several apps on Shopify.
You want to keep URL structures close to the old site.
You’re comfortable with, or will pay for, ongoing updates, backups and security.

It gets harder with very large catalogues, multi-store setups, heavy B2B and high order volumes. It can handle them, but it needs good hosting and careful build. I led a Magento 1 to WooCommerce migration for a vehicle parts retailer, and a large catalogue is very doable when the data is cleaned first.

When staying on Magento is right

Leaving is not automatically the modern choice. Stay, and upgrade, if most of these are true:

You sell B2B with contract pricing, quotes or complex account structures, and that is the business.
You run several stores, languages or regions from one installation.
Your catalogue is large and highly configurable.
Your custom code and integrations are in decent shape and someone understands them.

A slow Magento store is often a front-end problem, not a platform problem. If speed is the main complaint, a Hyvä front end on a supported version may be cheaper than a replatform; see my guide to Hyvä for when that’s worth it. An upgrade can also buy time to replatform properly rather than in a panic.

Realistic timelines

These ranges assume a decided platform and a business that can make decisions quickly. They’re my planning assumptions, not a market average.

Store profile	Planning assumption	What stretches it
Small catalogue, standard checkout, few integrations	8 to 12 weeks	Late content, design rounds
Mid-sized store, several integrations, some custom features	3 to 6 months	Integration testing, data quality
B2B, multi-store or ERP-led stock and pricing	6 months or more	Pricing rules, third-party suppliers’ availability

Avoid launching in your peak season, and leave at least two weeks after launch with the old store available read-only, so you can check orders, redirects and data against it.

How to brief agencies

Agencies quote what you describe. If the brief says “migrate our Magento store”, you’ll get three quotes for three different projects. A sound brief lists:

Every feature the current store has, including the ones nobody wrote down: admin reports, export scripts, scheduled jobs, emails.
Every integration, named by what it does (stock sync, order export to accounts, courier labels), with the direction of data and how often.
The data to move: how many products, customers and orders, how far back, and what can be left behind.
Search requirements: the redirect map, who builds it and who checks it after launch.
Running costs: ask each agency for apps, plugins, licences and hosting by year, not just the build price.
Acceptance criteria: what “done” means for each feature, written before work starts.

The acceptance criteria builder helps with the last one, and the proposal comparison shows how quotes look once the gaps are costed.

The risks to manage

Search traffic loss from missing or lazy redirects. The most common and most expensive.
Silent feature loss: something the old store did automatically that nobody listed, found when a customer complains.
Dirty data carried straight across. Duplicate customers, missing barcodes and broken images don’t improve by moving.
Integration timing: the stock or accounts supplier who needs six weeks’ notice.
Running costs that weren’t in the business case.
Payment and tracking setup: payment provider, analytics, product feeds and email marketing all need reconnecting and testing with real orders.

What I’d do

Before choosing a platform, I’d get the current store written down: version, extensions, custom code, integrations, data volumes and the pages that earn search traffic. That inventory usually makes the choice obvious, and it becomes the brief for whichever agency builds it.

That’s what my scoping brief produces, from £750 (£1,500 for portals and integration-heavy work). If you stay on Magento while you decide, I can help plan and coordinate the patching with your developers or a specialist agency. Their implementation work and release schedule are scoped and quoted separately. And if the inventory says stay, I’ll say so.