If you’re under $400k/year and BigCommerce works, stay, if you’re scaling and the platform is starting to feel like a ceiling, the move is worth running the numbers on.
Where the work actually is
The data migration is straightforward, BigCommerce exports cleanly. The leverage in the project is in (a) re-mapping custom fields and modifiers into Shopify’s metafield/variant model so your theme reads them correctly, and (b) rebuilding the front-end on Online Store 2.0 instead of porting the Stencil layout one-for-one.
How to migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify
At a high level, a BigCommerce to Shopify migration runs in five moves:
- Model the data. We map BigCommerce custom fields to Shopify metafields and product modifiers to variants, then get your sign-off before anything moves.
- Rebuild the storefront. The Stencil theme gets rebuilt on Online Store 2.0 sections rather than ported line for line, so it renders faster and your team can merchandise it without a developer.
- Move the data by script. Products, customers, orders, and metadata migrate to a Shopify dev store you review on staging.
- Map every URL. We generate a 301 redirect for each product, category, blog, and content URL, and preserve canonical tags so Search Console never sees duplicate content.
- Cut over and watch it. DNS switches, and we monitor conversion, 404s, and integration health for 30 days.
Your BigCommerce store stays live and selling the whole time. The only switch-over moment is the DNS change.
What we transfer from BigCommerce to Shopify
Everything that carries value moves across: products with their options and modifiers, customers with their groups and B2B price lists, full order history with fulfilment and refund status, categories with their SEO settings, coupons, reviews, and every blog post and CMS page. Custom fields become properly typed Shopify metafields so your theme reads them natively, and the whole URL structure gets redirected rather than abandoned. Nothing gets left on the old platform because it was “too fiddly to export.”
BigCommerce to Shopify data migration
The data migration is scripted, not hand-keyed, which is what keeps a 20,000-SKU catalog accurate through the move. We run a validation sample first and check it against the source record by record, then run the full cutover only once that reconciles. Products, customers, orders, metafields, and redirects all move on the same pass, so nothing drifts out of sync between the two systems. A silent mismatch caught on staging costs an hour, the same mismatch found after launch costs a weekend.
Moving from BigCommerce to Shopify: timeline and cost
Most BigCommerce to Shopify migrations take 4-6 weeks, driven more by storefront complexity and integration count than by catalog size. We quote fixed-price after a free audit rather than off a headline number, because a single-storefront catalog and a multi-region B2B build are genuinely different jobs. The number worth measuring it against is what BigCommerce’s revenue-tier pricing costs you as you grow: for scaling brands, the Shopify move usually pays for itself within a quarter or two on platform fees alone.
Why replatform from BigCommerce to Shopify
Brands rarely replatform from BigCommerce because something broke. They do it because the platform starts charging more exactly as they grow, the marketplace runs out of the tool they need next, and the checkout won’t bend the way the business now needs it to. Shopify’s larger app ecosystem, Functions-based checkout extensibility, and flat Plus pricing remove those three ceilings at once. If BigCommerce is starting to feel like a tax on growth rather than a platform for it, that’s the signal to move.
What we don’t do
- We don’t migrate stores actively earning under $200k/year unless there’s a B2B or international expansion driver, the maths usually doesn’t justify it.
- We don’t carry over Stencil-era theme code. The architecture differences are too deep to retrofit cleanly.
- We don’t promise zero downtime; we promise zero customer-facing downtime. There’s a brief DNS propagation window where some visitors hit either side.
