Migración de Magento a Shopify

4 Reasons Why You Should Migrate Magento to Shopify

Shopify is an e-commerce platform providing merchants with robust tools to build and manage online stores. It currently hosts over 4 million websites globally. If you’re considering migrating from Magento, here are four key reasons why Shopify might be the right choice for you:

Pro Tips: We also provide an overview comparison of Magento vs Shopify, which you can refer to!

Escape Magento’s Complexity for Shopify’s Simplicity

• Magento’s Challenge: Magento is a open-source eCommerce platform that offers extensive customization and scalability, especially suited for complex, enterprise-level operations. However, this flexibility comes with significant technical demands. Merchants often need advanced expertise to manage server infrastructure, database optimization, security patching, and frequent updates. For example, Magento 2.4 requires careful configuration of caching, PHP versions, and server resources to maintain performance and security. Inefficient setups can lead to slow loading times, especially during high traffic periods, and managing these technical aspects can be resource-intensive and distract from core business activities.
• Shopify’s Solution: Shopify provides a fully hosted, all-in-one eCommerce platform that abstracts away backend complexities. It handles hosting, security, PCI compliance, automatic updates, and scalability seamlessly. Shopify’s infrastructure includes a global content delivery network (CDN) ensuring fast, reliable performance even during traffic spikes like Black Friday. Merchants benefit from unlimited bandwidth, free SSL certificates, and 24/7 expert support without needing technical management. Its user-friendly interface and built-in tools enable quick store setup and management, allowing business owners to focus entirely on growth and sales rather than infrastructure.

Swap Magento’s Steep Learning Curve for Shopify’s Ease of Use

• Magento’s Challenge: Customizing and managing a Magento store often requires significant coding knowledge or hiring specialized developers, making even simple changes time-consuming and potentially expensive. Magento’s complex architecture leads to a steep learning curve, and finding experienced Magento developers can be difficult and costly. Even basic changes, such as modifying themes or layouts, might require compiling code and deploying static content, which slows down development and increases costs. Additionally, Magento’s development workflow can be slow, and updates may occasionally break functionality, further complicating management.
• Shopify’s Solution: Shopify is celebrated for its intuitive, user-friendly interface designed for business owners rather than developers. It simplifies store setup and management with a clean, organized dashboard and a guided onboarding process that helps users add products, set payment options, and customize themes without any coding skills. Shopify’s drag-and-drop theme editor allows you to rearrange sections, change colors, fonts, and layouts in real-time, empowering you to make changes on the fly without writing a single line of code. This ease of use saves immense time and reduces the need for costly developer resources, making Shopify an accessible platform for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Offload Magento’s Security & Reliability Burdens to Shopify

• Magento’s Challenge: When using Magento, the responsibility for maintaining robust security and ensuring high reliability falls largely on you or your team. This includes managing PCI compliance, installing and renewing SSL certificates, configuring secure hosting with firewalls and DDoS protection, performing regular backups, and monitoring for security threats. Magento users must keep their platform updated with security patches, enforce strong password policies and multi-factor authentication, and often rely on third-party hosting providers to ensure uptime and performance. These tasks require ongoing vigilance and technical expertise, which can be a significant operational burden.
• Shopify’s Solution: Shopify simplifies these challenges by handling security and reliability as part of its hosted platform. Shopify provides SSL encryption by default for all stores, ensuring all traffic is securely transmitted over HTTPS at no extra cost to merchants. Shopify is fully PCI DSS compliant, maintaining Level 1 certification through annual audits and proactive risk management, so merchants do not need to manage PCI compliance themselves. Shopify employs dedicated teams to manage infrastructure integrity, regular backups, fraud prevention, and security updates. Features such as unified user authentication, enhanced two-factor authentication, and a shift to hCaptcha for bot protection further strengthen security. Additionally, Shopify boasts an impressive uptime record, ensuring stores remain accessible 24/7, even during peak traffic periods, backed by robust infrastructure and support. This comprehensive management of security and reliability frees merchants from critical but time-consuming operational tasks, providing peace of mind and allowing them to focus on growing their business.

Gain Access to Shopify’s Comprehensive Support

• Magento’s Challenge: Support for Magento depends heavily on the version used. Magento Open Source users primarily rely on community forums, documentation, and third-party developers or agencies for help. There is no official 24/7 support line for the open-source version, which can make finding immediate expert assistance challenging and sometimes costly. However, Adobe Commerce (the enterprise version of Magento) offers 24/7 dedicated enterprise-level support, including account managers and technical assistance, but this comes at a higher price point and is targeted at larger businesses.
• Shopify’s Solution: Shopify provides 24/7 customer support across all plans, including live chat, phone, and email, making it highly accessible for businesses of all sizes. Shopify Plus customers receive priority support and dedicated account managers for personalized service. Beyond direct support, Shopify offers a rich ecosystem of official documentation, Shopify Learn educational resources, and a large community of merchants and Shopify Experts who provide advice and services. This extensive, always-available support network is invaluable, especially for businesses without large internal IT teams or technical expertise.

That’s why you might consider migrating from Magento to Shopify. Read more about the Magento review and the Shopify review to get an overview. Now let’s find out what types of data we can help you migrate to Shopify and how to do it right away.

Migrate from Magento to Shopify Manually

Manually migrating from Magento to Shopify gives you full control but requires significant time and technical skill. It’s a complex task. If you’re prepared for the challenge, follow these steps:

Step 1: Prepare to Migrate from Magento to Shopify

Before you export a single piece of data, thorough preparation is key to a successful migration:

• Audit & Clean Magento: Remove old data (products, customers). List essential Magento extensions; find Shopify app replacements. You can check out our reviews of the best free Shopify apps for eCommerce stores to find alternatives to Magento extensions.
• Back Up Magento: Go to System > Tools > Backups in Magento. Create a full system backup. Download and store it securely.
• Set Up Shopify: Sign up for Shopify. Choose a Shopify plan. Configure basic settings: store name, address, currency, payment gateways, and initial shipping settings. Choose the theme that best suits you, You can refer to our list of best Shopify themes to make a decision.

Step 2: Migrate Data from Magento to Shopify

This is the core of the manual migration process. Export Magento Data:

• In Magento, go to System > Data Transfer > Export.
• Export Products and Customers (Main File & Addresses) as CSV files. (Note: Orders are very difficult to migrate manually. Consider LitExtension apps or manual entry for essential orders.)
• Download your product images separately (from /media folder).

For more details, please refer to our articles:

• Magento Product Export Guide.
• Magento Orders Export Guide.

Format CSVs for Shopify:

• Get Shopify’s product and customer CSV templates from Shopify’s help docs.
• Open your Magento CSVs and Shopify templates in a spreadsheet program.
• Map Magento columns to Shopify columns. This is crucial and time-consuming. Ensure image URLs in your product CSV are publicly accessible.

Import Data to Shopify. In Shopify admin:

• Products > Import: Upload your formatted product CSV.
• Customers > Import: Upload your formatted customer CSV.
• Review mappings and start the import.

For a more detailed overview, check out our article How to Import Products to Shopify in Bulk with CSV File.

Step 3: Configure & Test Migration Result

• Review Imported Data: Check products (names, prices, images, variants, collections), customers, and any orders. Correct errors.
• Design & Customize Shopify: Customize your theme. Set up navigation menus. Recreate essential pages (About Us, Contact, Policies).
• Install Shopify Apps: Add apps for needed functionality (reviews, SEO, specific shipping, etc.).
• Configure Settings: Finalize payment, shipping, and tax configurations in Shopify.
• Test Everything:
  • Browse your Shopify store: check links, pages, and product details.
  • Place test orders with different payment/shipping options.
  • Test on mobile devices. Check site speed and optimization. Fix all issues.

Step 4: Go Live

Set Up URL Redirects (301 Redirects): 

• For every important Magento URL (products, categories, pages), create a 301 redirect to its corresponding new Shopify URL.
• Shopify has a built-in URL Redirects feature (Online Store > Navigation > URL Redirects).
• For a large number of redirects, you might use an app or bulk import a CSV of redirects.

Point Your Domain to Shopify:

• Log in to your domain registrar’s control panel (where you purchased your domain). Update your DNS records (always verify current values with Shopify’s official documentation).
• In your Shopify Admin (Settings > Domains), add your custom domain and follow the verification steps.
• DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate globally.

Launch Your Shopify Store:

• Once DNS propagation is complete and you’ve done final checks, remove any password protection from your Shopify store.
• Announce your new store to your customers via email campaigns, social media, and any other relevant channels. Highlight new features or improvements.

Post-Launch Monitoring:

• Use Shopify Analytics and Google Analytics to track store performance, customer behavior, and sales.
• Monitor for any 404 errors (broken links) using Google Search Console.
• Gather customer feedback and be prepared to make adjustments.

Key Challenges When Manually Migrating from Magento to Shopify

• Data Mapping Complexity: Accurately converting Magento data to Shopify’s CSV format is intricate.
• Theme & Design: Your Magento theme won’t transfer; you’ll need to design/customize in Shopify.
• App Equivalents: Magento extensions require finding and configuring Shopify app alternatives.