The Cost of Migrating from Magento to Shopify: A Detailed Breakdown for Business Owners

Thinking about moving your e-commerce store to another platform? Whatever the reason, take our advice and plan everything properly from the very beginning to make this venture successful. And don’t forget that any planning necessarily includes budgeting.

We’re here to help you with all that. Let’s explore Magento to Shopify migration costs and examine the factors affecting pricing. With this detailed guide, you’ll know where to start and what budget you need to hire a Magento and Shopify development company for professional assistance.

Basics of Migration: Why Move to Another Platform?

What reasons might motivate an e-commerce business owner to change one platform to another, be it Magento, Shopify, or something else, and undertake an expensive and complicated migration? Let's try to figure this out.

Scalability Limitations. Let's say you mis-planned your business strategy from the start, failing to anticipate the company's growth, or it performed better than expected. In that case, it's really worth migrating to another platform that can support raising traffic and would allow you to seamlessly process the increased number of customers, orders, products, and other e-commerce data.
Insufficient Functionality. Another problem you may face is a possible lack of pre-built features you need, for example, if the platform is short on product display options or offers poor marketing support. By strengthening your online store with a system with more capabilities, you can manage your business operations more intuitively and automatically.
Too high costs. Running an online store inevitably involves expenses associated with the chosen e-commerce platform, be it transaction fees, expensive subscriptions, or the need to maintain server infrastructure. Spending money on migration is sometimes more profitable in the long run since it cuts down on fixed overhead costs.
Low Customization. Another important criterion for choosing a platform is its customizability. Solutions like Magento offer many opportunities to manage settings and customize the store to your needs. At the same time, Shopify is less flexible in this regard but easier to manage because it doesn’t require technical skills. It’s up to you to decide what matters most and what to choose for your project.
Poor Customer Support. Finally, you may be pushed to migrate by unsatisfactory customer service. It is important that you can always ask for help and get an answer in a timely manner.

Of course, the above list is incomplete and can be supplemented with other options, such as needing tech skills to manage a platform or having security concerns. Whatever your motives for moving to Shopify, you must start this journey by analyzing your possible expenses. After all, complex projects like migration require a professional approach, which means paying for Shopify development services. And that's far from the only item in the expense breakdown.

Magento to Shopify Migration: Key Factors in Pricing

Let's first briefly list what influences the migration budget. This will give us the basics we need to analyze each factor separately in a more informed manner.

Project complexity. Of course, the first thing that affects future costs is the task itself and what it entails. There are many aspects to consider, from the complexity of your existing Magento store to your wishes for the Shopify one, including the required level of customization and third-party integrations.
Rate of the Shopify development company. The task ahead is uneasy; only a professional team can handle it properly. And if you don't have an in-house one, you'll have no choice but to hire a tech engineering company and pay them for expert assistance. Moreover, the price depends on such factors as: (1) Team experience and number of years on the market. (2) Company reputation and earned name. (3) The location of developers: strangely enough, but it also indirectly affects the rate.
Strict deadlines. The more urgent the project and the stricter the deadlines, the more effort and skills the experts must apply, and the more money they might ask for their help. However, we’ll detail this issue later, so keep reading.

Now that we’re armed enough to further investigate Magento to Shopify migration costs, let’s do this.

Project Planning & Strategy Development Costs

Statistics confirm that planning is of the utmost importance when it comes to migration. According to Digital Commerce 360, almost half of such projects result in unnecessary expenses because e-commerce businesses encounter pitfalls they didn’t expect at the outset. The main reason is a lack of initial planning.

“But why does planning cost money?” you may rightfully ask.

The point is that the team you hire to help you must first analyze the project scope and get as much information as possible about the upcoming task. For example, what is your current online store, and how do you see the future one? Do you have any deadlines? Only after receiving answers to these and many other questions will they be able to create a strategy for an effective and safe Magento to Shopify migration.

Sure, this kind of strategizing takes time and involves expenses, but all your costs will pay off in the long run since the right start will allow you to achieve the following:

No unplanned tasks. You’ll have a clear, step-by-step action plan to guide you through the migration without unpleasant surprises.
Business continuity. Knowing the order of actions will help you avoid downtime or at least reduce it to a minimum during migration.
Risk-Free Migration: Any planning includes an analysis of possible risks and the development of strategies to avoid or quickly resolve them.

All this results in a smooth transition to a new platform: the entire process will be seamless without interfering with your business.

Magento to Shopify Migration Complexity

We’ve already touched upon the relationship between project complexity and the cost of Shopify development services. Let’s examine this point in more detail.

#1. E-commerce Business Size

Obviously, migrating a large multi-vendor platform with a huge number of sellers and an even larger number of customers is more difficult than doing so with a small online store focused on one brand—after all, the larger the project, the more information it involves and the higher the costs.

The budget grows as the store does because you must securely migrate all your data about products, customers, suppliers, transactions, etc. In other words, you need to transfer everything to the new platform without losing a single bit.

Luckily, you are not responsible for this task but the hired team. They ensure the integrity and compatibility of the data by mapping, restructuring, and validating it so that it fully complies with the Shopify store's architecture.

Sounds pretty challenging, right? Well, that’s another reason to pay for Magento & Shopify development services.

#2. Design and Customization

A complete and seamless data transfer is one of the most critical migration tasks, but it is far from the only one on the to-do list. Another important item is recreating the design of your online store after it starts running on Shopify.

It would seem that nothing could be simpler, but the impression is deceptive. After all, Shopify and Magento offer different frontend themes, so you have to find a solution to ensure the store's user interface continues to correspond to your unique identity no matter what. However, there is no need to worry: a professional Magento and Shopify development company takes care of such UI/UX tasks, which are a natural part of end-to-end migration projects. The only thing for you to do is hire an experienced tech engineering team; they'll get you covered.

Pre-Built Theme vs. Custom Design

Another topic for your reflection is choosing between pre-built themes and custom design. That's pretty simple: if you need a unique result, choose a custom approach. If you don't have too complex UI/UX requirements, choose a ready-made solution and customize it to your customers’ needs. And remember, the more customizations there are, the more effort and the higher the costs.

#3. Features & Integrations

We've sorted out the data transfer and design recreation, but this is far from the end of the Magento to Shopify migration. Now, it's time to replicate the functionality of your online store and integrate important systems that help it work like clockwork.

Replicating Magento Extensions

Magento stores are like a house made of bricks—modules and extensions that provide an intuitive online shopping experience. If you decide to switch to Shopify, you need to figure out how to replicate all these features.

There are two main options:

Search for Shopify apps that can perform the functions you need. Shopify has 8,000+ options, so you have plenty to choose from.
Creating custom features if you fail to find ready-made solutions. And keep in mind that custom development can't be cheap: the more complex the feature, the higher the cost.

Smooth Third-Party Integration

An important project stage covered by professional Shopify development services is integrating external systems like ERP, CRM, accounting software, payment gateways, marketing tools, and more. Surely, this work also adds cost to your migration budget, and here's why:

Compatibility Issues. Third-party solutions used in Magento may not fit with Shopify, so hired experts must put extra effort into getting everything working.
Additional Configurations. Some time should be spent configuring systems like the inventory management solution to ensure they work properly in the updated Shopify store, which also increases costs.
Unexpected App Fees. Using some apps and services from Shopify requires paying extra, sometimes every month.

#4. Quality Assurance and Post-Migration SupportEven with Magento to Shopify migration complete, your costs aren’t immediately over. Now comes the turn of thorough testing, designed to detect and eliminate potential risk areas, followed by post-migration technical support.Sometimes it is also necessary to invest in onboarding the company's employees and training them to work effectively with the updated Shopify system. These costs are more than justified in the long term because the more productive your staff is, the more financial benefit they bring to the business.

Additional Costs in Shopify Development Services

Our guide wouldn’t be complete without detailing hidden costs; many businesses overlook them and end up going over budget. Don’t make this mistake when planning your migration strategy.

Software & Licensing Fees

Shopify offers a huge number of different apps to equip your online store with all the necessary features, from smart inventory management to advanced analytics. The only problem is that some of these solutions are available only by subscription, with the minimum cost being 10 dollars per piece monthly (sometimes over 200$ per app!).

BTW!

As a highly experienced Magento and Shopify development company, we at Laconica know the right approach to choosing apps and can suggest which solutions are a must-have and which ones you can save on so as not to go beyond your budget.

Final Cleanup and Optimization

Some businesses want to transfer all the data, while others may be outdated, duplicated, or require standardization. That's why we recommend reviewing your e-commerce information, bringing everything into the right format, and removing unnecessary files. This may increase your budget by 10-20%, but the migration will be as successful as possible.

Last-stage Changes

Everyone is familiar with the situation when something urgently needs to be changed or improved at the very last minute, even if it goes against the initial plans. Magento to Shopify migration is no exception. Alas, any final unplanned customizations, whether refining the UI/UX or adding another feature, boost costs by 25-35%. Be prepared for this.

Project Urgency

The tighter the migration deadline, the more complicated the work and the higher the costs. Sometimes the budget can even double, and that's only natural! After all, the development team may have to work overtime to successfully relaunch your online store on a new platform, and overtime means overpaying.

Development Team’s Location

We've already mentioned that the cost of Shopify development services depends on the team's location. The reason is that the company offers a rate based on the standard of living.

The most expensive experts live in the USA and Western Europe, where the rate can reach $150–$200 per hour and even higher. Developers in Eastern Europe have more democratic prices and show a high level of technical expertise, so that's the most cost-effective option.

By the way, our Laconica is an Eastern European team with offices in Ukraine and Poland and experience working worldwide. And we’ll do our best to minimize unplanned costs while fully covering your e-commerce needs.

Conclusion

Our Magento to Shopify migration guide has come to an end, but your journey is just beginning. We sincerely hope our advice will help you make it successful, fast, and smooth. And if you need practical help, feel free to contact us! Laconica has been in the e-commerce market as a tech partner for over 10 years, during which time we've completed many various projects, from developing online stores from scratch to migrating their infrastructure to a new platform.

By the way, if you want to stay updated with the latest news in the e-commerce industry, follow your blog, as we constantly share valuable insights.