What a BigCommerce migration plan covers
We start with what your BigCommerce store actually does: products with variants and modifiers, customer groups and price lists, B2B Edition, storefronts, apps, and the Stencil or Catalyst front end. Each part gets a decision: move it, rebuild it on Shopify, replace it with an app or retire it. Then follow the URL map and redirects, the migration of products, customers and orders, tracking and feeds, and QA on real processes, from checkout to B2B orders.
PROVEN
RESULTS
TOTAL SALES VS. PREVIOUS PERIOD
What moves from BigCommerce, and how
BigCommerce and Shopify structure a catalogue differently. We map every part to its Shopify counterpart before anything is imported:
Products with variants move as products with variants. BigCommerce allows 600 variants per product, Shopify 2,048 but only three options, so products with more options are restructured.
Modifiers, such as engraving text, checkboxes or add-ons, have no SKU and no one-to-one Shopify equivalent. They become line item properties, bundles or separate products.
Categories become collections. Custom fields become metafields, with the storefront filters rebuilt on top of them.
Customer accounts, addresses and customer groups move. Passwords do not: BigCommerce cannot export them, so we plan activation emails or passwordless login.
Orders export from BigCommerce as CSV or through the API, but Shopify only accepts historical orders through its API. We decide with you how many years go along.
Reviews move through the importer of your review app; trust badges are placed back in the new store.
We have no BigCommerce case to show yet. The brands below, such as Malelions, OGÉR, Mason Garments and NØORDCODE., moved to Shopify from other platforms with the same method.
For every step in detail, read our guide BigCommerce to Shopify migration.
Apps, B2B Edition and integrations
A BigCommerce store leans on apps and, for larger merchants, on B2B Edition and Multi-Storefront. Each part gets a decision: covered by Shopify itself, replaced by an app, rebuilt as a custom app, or retired:
B2B Edition: company accounts, account hierarchy, price lists and payment terms map to Shopify B2B with companies, locations and catalogs. Shopify allows three active B2B catalogs on Basic, Grow and Advanced, unlimited on Plus. Quotes, shopping lists and the invoice portal need draft orders, an app or custom work.
Multi-Storefront: BigCommerce runs up to eight Stencil storefronts from one control panel, depending on the plan. On Shopify that becomes Markets in one store, or expansion stores on Plus (main store plus nine).
Stencil themes are built in Handlebars and do not transfer. The storefront is rebuilt as a Shopify theme, or headless with Hydrogen if you now run Catalyst on Next.js.
ERP, PIM, WMS and marketing connections get a data owner, sync frequency and error handling, tested before launch.
See Shopify B2B, headless Shopify and Shopify integrations. Still comparing the two platforms? Read BigCommerce vs Shopify.
Shopify or Shopify Plus: which plan fits follows from the scan, not from your current licence. See what Shopify Plus adds for larger brands.
BigCommerce URLs and SEO
Depending on the URL setting, BigCommerce product URLs look like /product-name, /products/product-name or /category/product-name, and category URLs like /category-name or /categories/category-name. On Shopify, products live under /products/, categories under /collections/ and pages under /pages/. That makes the redirect map the most important SEO deliverable of the project:
We crawl every indexable URL and collect the existing 301 redirects in BigCommerce, so old chains are shortened instead of extended.
Each old URL goes to its closest new page, never to the homepage by default.
Even on the long setting, where products already sit under /products/, we check every handle: one character difference is a 404.
Brand pages, blog posts, web pages and filter URLs with traffic get their own place in the map.
After launch we compare per template and folder, so a drop is found where it starts.
Shopify allows up to 100,000 redirects on its standard plans and 20 million on Plus, and only from URLs that no longer exist. BigCommerce’s root-level URLs don’t exist on Shopify, so redirects can catch them, provided the map is built and tested before launch.
Approach
We work in fixed phases, so you know at every point what has been decided and what is still open:
Migration audit: data, apps, B2B Edition, storefronts, URLs and processes, with scope and risks per decision.
Solution design: Shopify or Shopify Plus, data model, markets and the role of apps versus custom work.
Design and build, delivered in reviewable parts.
Trial migrations with real data, to measure completeness and duration.
QA on real processes: orders, payments, B2B orders, returns and tracking.
Cutover with data freeze, final sync and redirects, followed by monitoring after launch.
Plan backwards from your peak. To sell on Shopify on Black Friday 2027 (26 November), we count six weeks for the scan, four for scope, about twenty for build, migration and testing, and six for launch and hypercare, followed by a code freeze from early November. In practice: the decision has to be made in February 2027.
We migrate in three runs, never one: a dry run in a development store to find fields that arrive empty, a dress rehearsal with the full data set to time the import, and a delta run after the freeze. After launch our hypercare runs 90 days, starting with daily checks of orders per hour, checkout conversion, failed payments per method, 404s and support tickets.
Brands we moved to Shopify Plus
Planning to leave BigCommerce?
Tell us your BigCommerce plan and sales level, whether you use B2B Edition, Multi-Storefront or Catalyst, which apps you rely on and your timing. We reply with a first view on scope, risks and the route to Shopify, and suggest a short call to walk through it.
