Magento is powerful, and that power has a running cost: servers, upgrades, security patches and developers who know the platform. For many stores the question is no longer whether Magento can do the job, but whether it is worth what it takes to keep it doing the job. If you are weighing a move, the planning starts with how Magento’s concepts map to Shopify.
How Magento concepts map to Shopify
- Simple and configurable products. Configurable products and their child products become a Shopify product with variants.
- Attribute sets and attributes. Attributes used for options become product options; the rest become metafields, which need to be set up before import.
- Bundle and grouped products do not have a direct built-in match and usually rely on a bundles app or a theme feature.
- Categories become collections, either manual or rule-based.
- Layered navigation is replaced by Shopify’s filtering, configured through the Search & Discovery app.
- CMS pages and blocks become Shopify pages and theme sections.
Store views, currencies and B2B
Multi-store and multi-language setups are where Magento migrations need the most thought. Shopify handles selling to several countries through Markets, with local currencies and languages on one store, while some businesses run separate expansion stores instead. Customer-group pricing and B2B catalogs map to Shopify’s B2B features on Shopify Plus, or to apps on other plans. Which route fits depends on how different your stores really are, so it is worth settling before anything is built.
Your URLs will change
Magento 2 adds a .html suffix to product and category URLs by default, often under nested category paths. Shopify uses fixed /products/ and /collections/ paths without a suffix, so every product and category URL changes and needs a permanent (301) redirect. Check for older URL rewrites too: many long-running Magento stores carry years of them, and the ones still receiving traffic or links belong in the redirect map.
What does not move
- Customer passwords cannot be migrated. Customers can sign in to Shopify accounts with an email address and a one-time code instead.
- Custom modules and extensions need a Shopify app, a theme feature or a custom build in their place.
- Stored payment details do not transfer between platforms.
Magento 1 reached end of support in June 2020. If you are still on it, the move is more urgent, and it is worth planning as a migration to Shopify rather than an upgrade you would repeat later.
Plan the order of work
- Inventory products, attributes, extensions, integrations and URLs.
- Decide how store views, currencies and B2B pricing will work on Shopify.
- Build and import behind a password, then check counts against Magento.
- Map and test redirects before launch.
For example redirects and answers to common questions, see our Magento to Shopify migration guide.