- 20+Shopify builds shipped
- 90+avg Lighthouse at launch
- +28%avg conversion lift
Why BigCommerce merchants move to Shopify
BigCommerce is a capable SaaS platform, but growing brands hit its edges, a thinner ecosystem, a checkout that converts less, and a theme layer that is hard to hire for. Here is what usually drives the switch, and what is genuinely at risk when you make it.
A far bigger app and theme ecosystem
Shopify's App Store and theme market dwarf BigCommerce's. On Shopify you configure what you used to custom-build or go without.
A checkout that converts
Shop Pay and Shopify Checkout consistently lift completion rates, one of the clearest wins in leaving BigCommerce behind.
Stencil is a dead end for many teams
BigCommerce's Handlebars-based Stencil is niche to hire for. Shopify's Online Store 2.0 and Liquid give you a deeper talent pool and faster iteration.
Plus without the surprises
Shopify Plus opens B2B, scripts, checkout extensibility and expansion stores with pricing that scales predictably.
What's at risk if it's done badly
Lost rankings from broken URLs, orphaned order history, mangled product options, and B2B price lists that don't carry across. Every one of these is preventable with the right mapping.
What moves across, and how
A plain-English map of your BigCommerce data to its Shopify home. We reconcile record counts on both sides before go-live.
| Shopify destination | Migration notes | |
|---|---|---|
| Products & images | Products + media | Full catalogue with all images; custom fields become metafields |
| Options, variants & modifiers | Variants + app/metafields | SKU-generating variants map directly; non-SKU modifiers and rules rebuilt with a product-options app |
| Categories | Collections | Category tree flattened to Shopify's structure, manual and automated collections |
| Brands | Vendor + collections | Brand pages recreated as collections with 301 redirects |
| Customers & groups | Customers + B2B / segments | Customer groups become B2B companies or segments; passwords cannot transfer from any platform |
| Price lists | B2B catalogues | Group pricing rebuilt as Plus B2B catalogues or discount logic |
| Orders | Order history | Historical orders imported for service, returns and reporting continuity |
| Content & blog | Pages + blog | Static pages and posts migrated with URLs preserved or redirected |
| URLs & SEO | 301 redirects + metafields | Every indexed URL mapped; meta titles and descriptions carried across |
What a BigCommerce migration covers
We move the whole store, protect your search equity, and handle the parts of BigCommerce that don't have a one-to-one Shopify equivalent.
What we migrate
- Products, images and custom fields (mapped to metafields)
- Options, variants and modifiers
- Categories to Shopify collections
- Brands to vendor and brand collections
- Customers and customer groups
- Orders and full order history
- Content pages and blog posts
- Native reviews into a review app
SEO & redirects
- Every indexed URL mapped to its Shopify destination
- 301 redirects for products, categories, brands and content
- Meta titles and descriptions carried across
- Canonical tags and clean URL handling
- New XML sitemap submitted to Search Console
- Structured data rebuilt for products and breadcrumbs
BigCommerce-specific challenges
- Options, modifiers and the product rules engine rebuilt as variants plus a product-options app
- Customer groups and price lists moved to Shopify B2B catalogues or segment logic
- Multi-storefront (Channel Manager) mapped to Shopify Markets or expansion stores
- API rate limits handled with throttled, resumable extraction
- Stencil storefront rebuilt in Online Store 2.0 or Hydrogen, not a theme port
How we run the migration
A staged, reversible process built around zero trading disruption. We don't quote a fixed timeline until we've inspected your store, catalogue size, options complexity and integrations set the pace.
Audit & architecture
Export your catalogue, options and rules, customer groups, price lists and integrations. Map every entity to the Shopify data model and flag anything without a clean equivalent.
Theme build
Rebuild the Stencil storefront in Online Store 2.0 or Hydrogen, keeping your look, lifting speed and accessibility. Never a like-for-like theme port.
Data mapping & integrations
Script the product, customer and order migration. Reconnect ERP, 3PL, payments, subscriptions and marketing so nothing goes dark at launch.
Testing & QA
Reconcile record counts, then test checkout, variants, B2B pricing, redirects and search on a staging store until the numbers match.
Delta cutover
A final sync of orders and customers created since the first pass, then the DNS switch. No catalogue freeze, no trading days lost.
Post-launch monitoring
Watch Search Console, redirects and Core Web Vitals for the weeks that matter. Crawl errors and index drops get fixed fast.
What a BigCommerce migration costs
Typical AUD ranges, scoped after a discovery audit of your store. Catalogue size, options complexity and integration count move the number more than anything else.
Essential migration
Catalogue, customers, orders and redirects; storefront rebuilt from a strong Shopify base theme.
Custom replatform
Bespoke Online Store 2.0 theme, B2B pricing, integrations and complex product options.
Plus / headless
Shopify Plus or Hydrogen, multi-store, ERP and 3PL, high SKU and variant counts.
BigCommerce migration questions
Keep exploring
Get a BigCommerce → Shopify migration plan
Send us your store and we'll come back with a mapped migration plan, what moves, what needs rebuilding, and a timeline scoped to your catalogue. No fixed quote before we've looked.
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