Here is the verdict up front. BigCommerce earns the move for a growing store when Shopify’s app stack, transaction costs, or catalogue limits start shaping business decisions instead of serving them. BigCommerce includes more commerce features natively, from product options to built-in B2B tools, which can simplify a stack that has grown expensive and fragile. The catch is that themes do not transfer, apps must be replaced rather than moved, and search rankings depend entirely on redirect discipline. When you migrate Shopify to BigCommerce growing store owners should therefore budget as much time for theme rebuild, app replacement, and redirect testing as for product data.
This guide maps all four, then gives you the checkout test list that decides launch day.
The verdict on outgrowing Shopify
Shopify apps versus BigCommerce native features
Choosing between staying and moving is a decision about the next two years, not about this week’s annoyance. Write down the three frustrations that pushed you to consider the move and check whether the new platform genuinely solves all three or merely replaces them with different ones. Read recent reviews from teams of a similar size, because a tool that shines for a solo user can strain under a team, and the reverse is also true. If only one of the three frustrations is solved, the move may still be worth it, but say so plainly and price the remaining two into the decision. A move made with open eyes lasts.
A move made on a single impressive demo usually ends with a second move a year later.
BigCommerce catalogue and B2B strengths
Price is usually the trigger, but it is rarely the whole reason to move. When you compare the two bills side by side, look past the headline monthly figure and count what each plan actually includes for the people who will use it every day. A cheaper plan that forces you to buy a second tool for something the old plan included is not cheaper at all. migrate Shopify to BigCommerce growing store deserves a simple spreadsheet before anyone cancels anything. List every seat, every add-on, and every integration you pay for today, then price the same setup on the new platform.
Add the cost of running both platforms side by side for one or two months, because that overlap is the honest price of a careful move. Most small teams find the saving is real but smaller than the marketing pages suggest, and the real win is a better fit for how the team works now rather than a dramatic cut to the bill.
How to migrate Shopify to BigCommerce growing store teams in phases
A pilot batch is the cheapest insurance a migration can buy. Pick a small group that covers the messy cases, not just the easy ones. Include someone with a large archive, someone who shares heavily with outsiders, and someone who uses the product on a phone as much as on a computer. Move their data first, then give them a few normal working days on the new platform before you judge the result. Ask them to find five specific items without help, to share one item with a colleague, and to complete one everyday task end to end. Their answers tell you more than any feature table.
If the pilot group struggles, fix the instructions and the mapping, not the people. Only when the pilot group works comfortably should the rest of the team follow.
Timing a move well is mostly about avoiding the worst week, not finding a perfect one. Look at the calendar for deadlines, launches, holidays, and the days when the person who knows the old system best will be away. Then pick a quiet stretch and work backwards. Exports and pilot batches happen in the first week, the full import in the second, and verification in the third. Tell everyone the dates early, including clients who share files with you, so nobody is surprised by a changed link or a new invite. If a deadline moves into your migration window, pause the move rather than rushing it. A migration delayed by a week costs little.
A migration rushed through a deadline week costs trust, and trust is harder to rebuild than any folder.
Run the move as a build beside the live store, never as an edit to it. Shopify keeps selling while BigCommerce is built, tested, and populated. migrate Shopify to BigCommerce growing store works when the live store is touched only at the final domain switch, after every test on this guide has passed.
Product, app, and theme mapping
Shopify collections become BigCommerce categories
Mapping is the unglamorous work that decides whether the new workspace feels familiar or foreign. Before importing, write down what each old container becomes in the new world and keep that sheet open during the whole import. Names matter more than people expect. A folder or list called Clients in the old tool should still be called Clients in the new one, or people will spend weeks hunting for things they used to find by habit. Do the same for labels, tags, and groups. Where the new tool has no exact match for an old concept, decide the closest fit in advance and note it on the mapping sheet so nobody invents a different answer mid-import.
After the import, spot check ten items from different parts of the archive and confirm each one landed where the sheet said it would.
Shopify themes rebuilt on BigCommerce
No product, app, or theme moves without a destination row below. If a row says rebuild, budget the rebuild honestly. migrate Shopify to BigCommerce growing store fails most often on rows that were assumed to transfer and did not.
| Shopify item | BigCommerce destination | What to check after import |
|---|---|---|
| Products and variants | BigCommerce products and variants | Titles, SKUs, prices, options, and images match |
| Collections | BigCommerce categories | Products appear in the right categories |
| Customers | BigCommerce customers | Accounts, addresses, and groups transferred |
| Orders and history | BigCommerce orders | Order counts and totals reconcile with Shopify |
| Discount codes | BigCommerce promotions | Codes, values, and expiry dates tested |
| Blog posts and pages | BigCommerce blog and pages | Content, images, and links intact |
| Apps | Native BigCommerce features or BigCommerce apps | Each app has a named replacement or is retired |
| Theme | New or customised BigCommerce theme | Design, navigation, and mobile layout approved |
Moving products, customers, and orders
Shopify CSV export for products
Exports are where migrations quietly succeed or fail, so treat the export as a deliverable in its own right. Run the export from the desktop app or the admin console rather than a phone, because desktop exports expose the full options for format, attachments, and folder structure. Keep the original export files untouched in a clearly named folder, and work only on copies. That way a bad import can be repeated without going back to the source and re-exporting everything. Check the size of each export before you import it. A file that is far smaller than expected usually means attachments or a whole section were left out.
A file far larger than expected may contain duplicates from an earlier partial export. Either way, stop and look before you import, because importing twice creates the duplicate mess that takes longest to clean up.
BigCommerce product import
The small details are where a migration earns its reputation inside a team. Shopify product options and variants on BigCommerce deserves a dedicated test during the pilot, because it is used daily and any breakage shows up immediately. Run through it with the person who uses it most and watch where they pause. A pause usually means a label changed, a default changed, or a step moved, and each of those is fixable in minutes once spotted. Write the fix into the team guide the same day. Small details also include the things nobody owns, like shared templates, saved searches, and default views. Assign an owner to each one before the move.
An unowned detail is a detail that will be discovered broken at the worst possible moment.
Replacing apps and rebuilding the theme
Shopify Flow workflows on BigCommerce
Every migration leaves something behind, and naming those gaps early prevents disappointment later. Some features have no direct equivalent, some history is stored in a format the new tool cannot read, and some automations have to be rebuilt by hand. Make a short list of the three things your team would miss most if they vanished, and test each one during the pilot. If a gap turns out to be a deal breaker, you want to learn that while the old platform is still running, not after it is cancelled. For gaps you can live with, write a one-paragraph workaround and put it where people will find it.
Teams accept a missing feature far more easily when someone has already explained the replacement than when they discover the loss on their own during a busy day.
A second detail worth the same attention is BigCommerce SEO settings and URL structure, which tends to be set up once and then forgotten. Because it is forgotten, it is also the thing most likely to be configured differently on the new platform without anyone noticing. Compare the old and new settings side by side during the pilot and screenshot both so the comparison can be repeated after the full import. If the new platform offers a stronger or simpler version of the same setting, adopt it deliberately and tell the team what changed. Quiet improvements are fine, but quiet changes that nobody was told about feel like bugs.
A short message explaining the change turns a potential complaint into a small welcome improvement.
Redirect and checkout-test checklist before launch
Testing after a move should follow real tasks, not a generic checklist copied from a help page. Pick the five things your team does most often and run each one on the new platform with real data. Send a message, share a file, find an old item by searching, open the workspace on a phone, and undo a mistake. Time each task loosely and note where anyone hesitates. Hesitation is useful information. It points to the exact spot where a short guide, a renamed folder, or a different default setting would help. Repeat the same five tasks a week later. If the second run is faster and nobody asks for help, the move has landed.
If the same task still stalls, that task owns your next fix, not some other feature nobody uses.
This is the launch gate. No item is optional and no item is marked done on a guess. Test with real products, real payment methods in test mode, and real shipping addresses. migrate Shopify to BigCommerce growing store is ready to launch only when every row below passes on the staging store.
- [ ] Create a 301 redirect for every indexed Shopify product, collection, and blog URL, and test a sample of each type.
- [ ] Place a test order with a real product, a discount code, and a shipping address in each region you serve.
- [ ] Confirm tax calculates correctly for at least one address in each tax region the store serves.
- [ ] Test every payment method offered, including cards and any wallet or instalment option, in test mode first.
- [ ] Check that shipping rates appear correctly for standard, express, and free-shipping thresholds.
- [ ] Confirm customer accounts can sign in, or that password-reset instructions are ready if passwords cannot transfer.
- [ ] Test the store on a phone from homepage to order confirmation, including the payment step.
- [ ] Verify analytics, tracking pixels, and search console properties point at the new store before launch.
- [ ] Confirm email notifications for orders, shipping, and refunds use the new branding and correct sender details.
- [ ] Run a final delta import so products, stock, and orders changed during the build are not left behind.
Payments, shipping, tax, and SEO setup
BigCommerce payment gateway setup
Billing overlap is the part of a migration budget that people forget until the invoice arrives. Plan to pay for both platforms for at least one full billing cycle, and two if the team is large or the data is messy. Downgrade the old plan before cancelling it outright if the vendor allows it, since a cheaper read-only tier keeps the safety net while cutting the cost. Watch renewal dates on both sides. A move that finishes three days after an annual renewal has effectively paid for a year of a platform nobody uses.
Set a calendar reminder for the cancellation date on the day the move starts, not the day you hope it ends, so the reminder survives even if the project slips by a week or two.
BigCommerce 301 redirects for Shopify URLs
Vendor support is worth testing before you need it, not after something breaks. During the pilot, send the new vendor one real question and note how long a useful answer takes. Check whether help is available on the channels your team actually uses, and whether the help pages cover migration specifically rather than only everyday use. Keep the old vendor’s support details handy too, because questions about exports usually need the old vendor, not the new one. If the new vendor offers a free migration review for larger accounts, take it.
A second pair of eyes on the mapping sheet often catches a mistake that the team is too close to see, and the review costs nothing but a short call.
Launch day, monitoring, and the Shopify exit
BigCommerce checkout on mobile after launch
Verification is a job with an owner and a deadline, not a vague hope that someone will notice problems. Assign one person to own the post-move check and give them a written list of what to confirm. Counts come first. Compare the number of items before and after, and investigate any gap larger than a rounding difference. Then check quality on a sample. Open items from the start, middle, and end of the archive and confirm attachments, images, and formatting survived. Finally, check access. Confirm that the people who should see shared items can still see them and that former collaborators cannot. When all three checks pass, write a short note saying so.
That note is what lets the team cancel the old plan without a lingering worry.
Training for a migration works best in short, task-shaped pieces rather than one long session. Nobody remembers a forty minute tour of every menu. People remember being shown how to do the three things they do every morning. Record a short screen video for each of those tasks, keep each one under three minutes, and link them from the top of the new workspace. Then hold one live session where people bring their own questions and their own messy examples. Answer with their data on screen, not with a demo account. After the session, keep a single page of answers to the questions that came up twice.
That page becomes the real manual, because it was written from the questions people actually asked.
Mobile behaviour decides whether a migration feels like an upgrade or a downgrade, because most people check the new tool on a phone before they ever sit at a desk. Install the new app on every phone and tablet the team uses, sign in, and confirm that offline access, search, and sharing all work the way people expect. Phones also expose the gaps fastest. A note, file, or message that looks fine on a computer but renders badly on a small screen will be reported within hours. Fix mobile display issues before the full rollout, even if that means adjusting a template or renaming a long folder. The desktop experience can wait.
The phone experience is the one people judge first.
Growing the store after the move
The habits in this section decide whether you migrate Shopify to BigCommerce growing store successfully or merely completely.
The first month on the new platform sets habits that last for years, so treat it as part of the migration rather than after it. Keep the mapping sheet and the team guide linked from the top of the new workspace for at least thirty days, because people will still look for old names and old locations while the new ones become familiar. Resist the urge to reorganise everything again immediately. A second reorganisation on top of a migration confuses people who have just learned the new layout, and it destroys the before-and-after comparison that tells you whether the move actually helped. Instead, collect small complaints in one shared document and review them together at the end of the month.
Patterns in that document point to genuine fixes, while one-off grumbles usually resolve themselves once the new routine settles. The goal of the first month is not perfection. It is a team that can do everyday work without thinking about the platform at all, which is the quietest sign that a migration has succeeded.
Measuring a migration after the fact is worth doing properly, because the next tool decision will lean on whatever story this one leaves behind. Pick three measures before the old platform closes and record them while you still can. The first is time on everyday tasks, measured loosely by asking the team how long the five most common tasks take now compared with before. The second is cost, including seats, add-ons, and the overlapping months, compared with the old bill for the same period. The third is friction, counted as support questions about the new platform per week, which should fall steadily after the first fortnight.
If all three move in the right direction, the move was a success and the numbers prove it. If one measure stalls, that measure names the next improvement project. Either way, the team ends up with evidence instead of opinions, and the next migration starts from a stronger position than this one did.
Every platform decision deserves a revisit date, set while the memory of the move is still fresh. Put a reminder twelve months out to ask whether the new platform still fits how the team works, whether the pricing still makes sense at the current size, and whether any feature that was missing at migration time has since appeared. A revisit is not a plan to move again. It is protection against the slow drift that made the last platform feel wrong, where pricing crept up, features went unused, and workarounds piled up until switching felt urgent.
Teams that review annually tend to make smaller, calmer adjustments, such as dropping unused seats or adopting one new feature, instead of another full migration. Write the revisit questions down now, while you can still remember what frustrated you about the old setup, and let that memory keep the new setup honest.
One last habit protects the launch. For the first month, check the redirect report and the order error log every Monday morning before anything else. Early catches here cost minutes, while the same problems discovered by customers cost refunds, reviews, and rankings.
More Reading on Stratilyze
Store owners planning this move often read next about choosing an ecommerce platform for growth, improving product page conversion, and ecommerce SEO after a redesign, since those topics protect the traffic and sales the migration itself puts briefly at risk. Anyone planning to migrate Shopify to BigCommerce growing store should start with the mapping table above.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do Shopify themes transfer to BigCommerce?
No. Shopify themes are not compatible with BigCommerce, so the design must be rebuilt on a BigCommerce theme, free or paid, or custom built. Treat the rebuild as a design refresh rather than a loss. Rebuilding forces decisions about navigation, mobile layout, and page speed that a copied theme would have postponed, and the result is usually a faster store than the one left behind.
Will customer passwords transfer?
Customer records transfer, but passwords generally do not, because password hashes are not portable between platforms. Plan a clear password-reset message for launch week and make the reset flow easy to find. Most customers accept one reset email when it is explained plainly. Do not promise a transfer that the platforms cannot deliver, since the surprise at first sign-in damages trust more than the reset itself.
How do I protect search rankings during the move?
Redirects protect rankings. Map every old Shopify URL to its new BigCommerce equivalent and create 301 redirects before launch, since BigCommerce’s self-service migration app can create many of these automatically for product and category URLs. After launch, check search console for crawl errors weekly for a month and fix any missed URL promptly. A redirect missed in launch week can cost a ranking that takes months to recover.
Can the store keep selling during migration?
Yes. Build the BigCommerce store alongside the live Shopify store and keep selling on Shopify until the new store passes all tests. Migration tools copy data while Shopify stays live, and a final delta import catches changes made during the build. The only moment of risk is the domain switch itself, which should be scheduled in a quiet trading window with support on standby.
What happens to Shopify apps we depend on?
Each app needs a named outcome, either a native BigCommerce feature, a BigCommerce app, custom development, or retirement. Audit the app list early, because one load-bearing app without a replacement can delay launch. Many stores discover during this audit that half their apps duplicate native BigCommerce features, which is part of the saving that justified the move.
How long does a Shopify to BigCommerce move take?
A small catalogue with a simple theme can move in a few weeks. A large catalogue with custom apps, B2B pricing, and heavy content needs two to three months including theme rebuild and testing. The product import is rarely the long pole. Theme work, app replacement, and checkout testing consume the calendar, so start those before the data move, not after it.
Do we need to tell customers about the platform change?
Tell customers only what affects them, which usually means new account sign-in steps and any change to order emails. A short notice on the website and in the first order confirmation after launch covers most stores. Avoid a long technical announcement about platforms, since customers care about ordering, delivery, and support, not about which system powers the store. What matters is that every customer-facing message after launch is accurate, branded, and tested.
What happens to Shopify gift cards after migration?
Gift cards need a deliberate plan because balances and codes do not always transfer cleanly between platforms. Export the list of outstanding gift cards with balances before migration, decide whether BigCommerce will honour them through its own gift certificate system or a replacement process, and tell affected customers plainly what to do. A customer discovering a dead gift card at checkout is a support problem and a trust problem, so resolve gift cards before launch rather than after the first complaint.
Launch when the checkout proves itself
A store migration is not finished when the data arrives. It is finished when a stranger can find a product, trust the price, pay without friction, and receive a confirmation that looks like your brand. That standard is why the redirect list and the checkout tests sit at the centre of this guide rather than at the end. Build beside the live store, replace every app deliberately, rebuild the theme with mobile first in mind, and switch the domain only after the test orders pass. Launch day will still be tense, because launch days always are, but it will be tense in the good way.
The way that comes from watching real orders arrive on a platform chosen for growth rather than inherited by habit. That is how you migrate Shopify to BigCommerce growing store with confidence, in waves, and with the old platform still warm.