You lose some freedom, not much capability, and the move usually pays back in about two years if your Magento upkeep is heavy. For a $15M store, a mid-market migration commonly costs $120,000 to $250,000 over 12 to 16 weeks, per one 2026 guide. Run cost falls mainly because the retainer and hosting shrink, even though the Shopify platform fee is not small.
The honest answer has three parts: what you lose and how to work around it, what it costs, and when it pays back. Our Magento to Shopify migration service team builds these plans, and the Shopify Plus vs Magento guide covers the platform comparison.
What you actually lose, and the workaround
Mapped to the areas Magento teams worry about most.
| Capability | What changes on Shopify Plus | Workaround |
| Complex catalogue rules | Products allow three options and up to 2,048 variants. Deep configurable products and attribute sets do not map one to one. | Metafields and metaobjects, split products, or a custom configurator app |
| Server-level customisation | No direct database or server code. Extensions become apps, Functions or custom apps. | Shopify Functions, custom app, or a rebuilt integration layer |
| Some B2B behaviour | Native B2B covers companies, catalogs, price lists and payment terms. Very complex tiered pricing or quoting can need an app. | Catalogs and price lists, a B2B app, or a custom quote module |
| Multi-store | Expansion stores and Markets replace store views. Store counts are bounded by the contract. | Markets for one catalogue, expansion stores for separate ones |
| Checkout | Checkout is customised through Checkout Extensibility, not template edits. | Checkout UI extensions and Functions |
| URL structure | Fixed path patterns such as /products/ and /collections/. | A complete 301 redirect map |
| Customer passwords | Hashed passwords do not carry over. | Forced reset email sequence |
Variant limits are from Shopify’s current developer documentation: 2,048 variants and three options per product.
What it costs at fifteen million dollars
One-time cost bands from a 2026 migration guide, not a quote.
| Project type | One-time cost | Typical timeline |
| Focused catalogue, low custom logic | $50,000 to $120,000 | 8 to 12 weeks |
| Mid-market with apps and light B2B | $120,000 to $250,000 | 12 to 16 weeks |
| Complex B2B, DTC and ERP or OMS | $250,000 to $400,000 or more | 16 to 24 weeks |
- Integration rebuild, which often takes 30 to 40 percent of the budget.
- Number of Magento extensions with no Shopify equivalent.
- Order history depth and how much is archived instead of migrated.
- Theme and checkout rebuild scope.
Timeline and the freeze period
The build is not the slow part. Discovery, redirects and data are.
| Phase | Typical weeks |
| Discovery and architecture | 1 to 4 |
| Build and data migration dry run | 5 to 10 |
| Integration wiring and UAT | 9 to 14 |
| SEO redirects, rehearsal and cutover | 13 to 16 |
- Set the freeze window about a week before launch.
- Expect 24 to 48 hours with no legacy catalogue edits around cutover.
- Run the full cutover on staging at least twice.
- Keep order capture continuous with a delta sync, as in our cutover answer.
Phases overlap, so weeks do not add up to the total.
Run cost: Magento vs Shopify Plus, and the payback
Same assumptions on both sides, shown openly.
| Scenario | Magento run cost per year | Shopify Plus run cost per year | Annual saving | Migration cost | Payback |
| Lean | $161,000 | $106,500 | $54,500 | $120,000 | 26 months |
| Mid-range | $245,000 | $163,500 | $81,500 | $185,000 | 27 months |
| Heavy | $365,000 | $228,000 | $137,000 | $250,000 | 22 months |
- Magento: $40,000 licence for the ten to twenty-five million band, $25,000 hosting, and a development retainer of $8,000 to $25,000 a month (lean, mid, heavy at $96,000, $180,000 and $300,000).
- Shopify Plus: variable fee of 0.35 percent of $15M (3-year term), or 0.40 percent in the heavy case, apps at $500 to $2,000 a month, and a lower retainer (our assumption).
- Fee percentages are industry-reported, not published by Shopify. Confirm against your quote.
- The table ignores revenue upside from conversion and speed, which is real but unproven for your store.
When moving is the wrong call
Do not migrate to escape a problem that migration will not fix.
Rule of thumb: if payback is beyond about three years with realistic assumptions, fix Magento instead.
Where we can help, and what we cannot show
We run Magento to Shopify migrations. We do not have a published case study here with GMV, timeline and a post-migration performance change, so ask for references that match your scale.
Read more: our Magento to Shopify migration service
Share your catalogue size, extensions and integrations, and our Magento to Shopify migration team will send a feature-loss list, a cost range and a payback estimate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Mostly freedom, not capability: server-level code access, unlimited store views, some complex configurable-product and layered-navigation behaviour, and some B2B edge cases. Most losses have a workaround using metafields, Functions, apps or a small custom app.
One 2026 guide puts a mid-market build with apps and light B2B at $120,000 to $250,000 and 12 to 16 weeks, and complex B2B with ERP work at $250,000 to $400,000 or more. Get a scoped quote, because integrations alone often take 30 to 40 percent of the budget.
Plan for 24 to 48 hours with no legacy catalogue edits around cutover, longer for fast-moving catalogues. The wider code and content freeze depends on your release calendar, so agree it in the plan.
Often, but not always. In our model the saving comes from lower retainer and hosting cost, not from licence price. If your Magento upkeep is already light, payback stretches. See the stay-or-move cost model for a licence renewal.
URL changes, missing redirects and lost internal links. Shopify fixes the URL structure, so a full 301 map is mandatory. Read how to migrate without losing SEO.
