BigCommerce to Shopify: When and How to Switch

If you're on BigCommerce and wondering whether Shopify is the better fit, you're not alone. BigCommerce's 2026 pricing update introduced an Open Payment Provider fee (2% on the Core plan, 1% on Growth, 0.6% on Scale) for merchants using non-approved payment gateways, and simultaneously cut GMV thresholds so more stores get pushed into higher tiers. The pricing argument that kept a lot of merchants on BigCommerce is gone.

A BigCommerce to Shopify migration is well-trodden territory. The risks are real but manageable if you plan carefully. This guide covers when the switch makes sense, what data moves across, what you lose in the process, and where these projects tend to go wrong.

When Does Switching from BigCommerce to Shopify Make Sense?

The pricing change is the sharpest trigger. A merchant processing £150,000 in annual GMV who was comfortably on BigCommerce's Plus plan at $79 per month may now need to move to the Scale plan at $299 per month due to the lowered GMV caps, plus pay the new payment provider fee on top. At that point, Shopify's total cost of ownership looks very different to how it looked two years ago.

Beyond pricing, the other triggers we see most often from merchants considering this move:

Shopify's app ecosystem has over 12,000 apps, versus BigCommerce's much smaller catalogue. That gap matters when you're extending functionality without custom development, and compounds over time as your needs grow.Shopify's theme marketplace and developer community give you more choice and faster iteration on your storefront. More competition means lower costs and better quality in most categories.Shopify holds roughly 29% of the US ecommerce software market with approximately 4.8 million active stores globally. The pool of developers, integrations, and agency partners is substantially larger, which matters at scale.

That said, if your store relies heavily on BigCommerce's native B2B features or you have product catalogues with more than 100 variants per product (BigCommerce supports up to 600, Shopify caps at 100 across three options), evaluate carefully before committing. For some use cases, the migration effort does not justify the switch.

What a BigCommerce to Shopify Migration Actually Transfers

Most of the core data moves across cleanly. Products (with variants, images, descriptions, and metafields), customer contact information, historical orders, and basic category structure all migrate. Tools like Matrixify and LitExtension handle the bulk of this automatically, reading your BigCommerce export and pushing it into Shopify's data structure.

Orders import as archived records rather than editable active orders, which is standard across any platform migration. Your customers' purchase history is preserved and visible. Order numbers will change, so if your team or customers reference historical order numbers for support queries, plan for that adjustment.

What Doesn't Transfer in a BigCommerce to Shopify Migration

This is where the planning matters most.

Customer passwords

Shopify cannot import encrypted passwords from BigCommerce. Every customer will receive an account activation email to create a new password. In practice, around 30-40% will miss the email, ignore it, or contact your support team confused about why they can't log in. Build a post-launch communication plan around this. A single automated email is not enough.

Variant structures above Shopify's limit

BigCommerce allows up to 600 variant combinations per product. Shopify's native limit is 100 variants across three options. If any of your products exceed that, you'll need to restructure your catalogue before or during migration, using metafields or product bundling approaches. For stores with large SKU counts, this is labour-intensive and should be scoped before you start.

Apps, integrations, and custom functionality

BigCommerce apps don't transfer. You'll need Shopify equivalents for every tool you rely on, from loyalty programmes and subscriptions to reviews and returns management. Most categories have strong Shopify options, but audit them before you commit to the migration. Custom-built BigCommerce features also need to be rebuilt or replaced on Shopify.

Your theme

Your BigCommerce theme doesn't come with you. Shopify's theme system is entirely different. For most brands, this is an opportunity to improve the storefront rather than a constraint, but it is a real cost to factor in. Our Shopify theme design and development work typically runs in parallel with the data migration to keep the overall timeline manageable.

The SEO Step You Cannot Skip

Switching platforms changes your URL structure. BigCommerce and Shopify use different URL patterns for products and collections. Without a complete 301 redirect map in place on launch day, every page you have built authority on becomes a 404 error overnight. That kind of damage can take months to recover from.

A full crawl of your existing site before the switch, a redirect map covering every URL, and systematic post-launch testing are non-negotiable. Migration tools don't auto-generate all redirects: this requires a deliberate mapping exercise. We cover this in detail in our guide to preserving SEO when you replatform to Shopify.

How Long Does a BigCommerce to Shopify Migration Take?

The data migration itself can run in as little as a few days using migration tools. The full project is considerably longer. A realistic breakdown for a mid-sized store:

Data audit and preparation (including variant structure review): 1-2 weeksData migration and redirect mapping: 1-2 weeksTheme development or configuration: 2-4 weeksIntegration setup and testing: 1-2 weeksQuality assurance and launch: 1 week

Budget 6-10 weeks for a mid-sized store. Complex stores with B2B setups, ERP integrations, or heavily custom-built functionality typically run 12-16 weeks. Underestimating this is one of the most common mistakes brands make. We cover the cost side in our guide to how much a Shopify migration costs.

The Conversion Opportunity Most Brands Miss

A platform migration forces you to rebuild or revisit your storefront. Most brands treat that as a cost to minimise. The smarter approach is to treat it as a reset: audit what is converting, what isn't, and build the new store around what actually works for your customers rather than replicating what you had.

Most Shopify stores don't have a traffic problem, they have a conversion problem. A migration is the clearest window you will have to address that properly. Shopify's ecosystem gives you access to better split-testing tools, more flexible product page structures, and a wider range of checkout optimisation options than most merchants take advantage of.

The stores that get the most out of a migration aren't the ones that move fastest. They're the ones that take the rebuild seriously and fix the conversion issues they had been ignoring on the old platform.

You can see how we structure that work through our Conversion Growth Retainer and our Shopify migration services, which are Glasgow-based but work with brands across the UK and internationally.

A BigCommerce to Shopify migration done well positions you for stronger growth on a platform with considerably more momentum. Done poorly, it costs you SEO ranking, customer trust, and months of recovery time. If you're weighing the decision or need the execution done properly, get in touch. We've worked on over 100 Shopify projects and know where these migrations tend to go wrong.