This pillar is operator-written and covers what migrates cleanly, what migrates partially, and what does not migrate at all without intervention. We use the same $5M-$200M DTC brand frame and name specific cost ranges where they are stable.
The recurring lesson across every engagement: data migration deserves its own workstream, its own owner, and its own budget line — not a sub-task buried inside the broader replatforming engagement. Brands that treat it as the central workstream, with the theme rebuild and app re-implementation as the supporting work, consistently ship cleaner migrations.
What migrates cleanly versus needs intervention
Standard catalog data — products, variants, basic metadata — migrates cleanly via any of the automated migration platforms (Cart2Cart, LitExtension, Next-Cart). Customer records migrate cleanly with one notable exception: passwords cannot be transferred and customers will need to reset on first login. Recent order history (under three years) migrates cleanly; older order data is technically possible but rarely worth the cost.
What needs intervention: custom metafields, B2B price lists and customer groups, subscription state for active subscribers, tax-zone configurations beyond the standard regions, redirect maps for non-trivial URL changes, and any content that lives outside the source platform's catalog (blogs, CMS pages, structured marketing content). For each of these, plan a dedicated workstream and a specific tool.
What does not migrate: anything tied to the source platform's extension ecosystem (Magento extensions, WooCommerce plugins, BigCommerce apps) needs to be re-implemented as a Shopify-side equivalent, not migrated. Treat extension functionality as a re-build, not a data move.
Catalog and metafield migration
For straightforward catalogs under 10K SKUs with standard field shapes, the automated migration platforms handle the catalog work in a single pass with minimal reconciliation. Above 10K SKUs or with custom field counts beyond platform defaults, plan to pair the automated tool with Matrixify for the field-level reconciliation that the wizards miss.
Metafields are where most catalog migrations slip. Source platforms often store custom product data in fields that have no direct Shopify analogue — they map to Shopify metafields with explicit schema definitions. Plan the metafield schema first (definitions, types, namespaces), then map the source fields, then load. The order matters; brands that load before defining the schema redo most of the work.
Customer and order history
Customer records migrate cleanly across all major source platforms. The wrinkle is passwords: Shopify cannot accept hashed passwords from other systems, so every migrated customer needs to reset on first login. Plan the comms around this explicitly. The most painful incidents are not the reset itself; they are the support tickets generated by customers who do not understand why they need to reset.
Order history is the cost-vs-value decision in every migration. Three years migrates cleanly; older order data is technically possible but the cost per year of additional history climbs steeply. Most brands cap at the most-recent 24 months and archive older orders in a warehouse for reporting. The migration cost saved is usually well above the analytical cost of not having older data in Shopify natively.
Redirects and SEO data
The redirect map is the single most important data artifact in any migration. A documented map covering every indexed URL, validated against Search Console before launch, and monitored daily for the first eight weeks is what determines whether SEO survives. The tooling (Easy Redirects, Traffic Control, the built-in Shopify URL redirects) is straightforward; the discipline is the hard part.
Beyond redirects, the data carried by SEO infrastructure — canonical URLs, meta titles and descriptions, structured data, sitemaps — needs to be either migrated or re-derived on the Shopify side. Brands that treat this as an afterthought consistently lose ranking. Brands that scope it as a dedicated workstream with a named owner consistently hold their position.
Subscription, B2B, and tax data
Subscription migration is its own workstream and rarely fits inside the catalog migration timeline. Active subscribers, billing cycles, and integration with the chosen Shopify subscription app (Recharge, Bold, Skio) require explicit reconciliation. The most common failure mode is double-billing during cutover; the discipline that prevents it is explicit cutover-week sequencing for billing.
B2B data — companies, locations, catalogs, price lists, customer-specific pricing — has improved significantly in Shopify Plus B2B over the last two years but still requires careful mapping from any source platform. Plan the B2B migration as a workstream parallel to but distinct from the B2C catalog migration.
Tax data is where the finance team gets surprised at month-end close. Tax-zone configurations, exemption certificates, and historical tax-collected data all need explicit handling. Get finance involved early; do not let tax discrepancies surface as a post-launch incident.