If you searched "bigcommerce to shopify migration" in the last few weeks, here's the actual reason: BigCommerce's Open Payment Provider Fee kicked in on June 1, 2026.

That fee charges 2% on Core, 1% on Growth, 0.6% on Scale, and a custom rate on Performance, every time you process an order through a non-Embedded payment gateway. It applies to your offline orders. It applies to B2B purchase orders. And combined with the renamed plans and the dropped GMV thresholds, a lot of mid-market merchants are suddenly paying way more to stay on BigCommerce than they would to migrate.

So this guide is the real playbook. The cost math. The 8-step process. The week-by-week timeline. What transfers and what doesn't. What actually breaks. And the one cost nobody else talks about: what happens to your customer support phone line during cutover.

We run Ringly.io, AI phone support for Shopify brands, and we've watched several customers migrate from BigCommerce in the last 12 months. The technical migration is the easy part. The week your customers can't log in is the hard part.

Hear what AI support calls sound like for your store. Just paste your Shopify URL and get sample calls in under 20 seconds, no email required. Listen to demo calls for my store.

Why everyone is migrating to Shopify in 2026 (the pricing trigger)

For years, BigCommerce's loudest sales pitch was: no transaction fees. That's gone.

On June 1, 2026, BigCommerce introduced the Open Payment Provider Fee. The rates:

The fee triggers any time you process payments through a non-Embedded gateway. That covers PayPal, Klarna, Affirm, Apple Pay outside their integration, and most B2B payment workflows. It also applies to offline orders and B2B purchase orders, which used to be free.

On top of that, BigCommerce renamed every plan and lowered the GMV thresholds. A merchant at $150K annual GMV used to sit comfortably on Plus at $79/mo. That same merchant now sits on Scale at $299/mo. That's a 278% platform cost jump before the new fee even hits.

According to Netalico's pricing analysis, the merchants most exposed are in the $400K to $2M GMV range, the exact segment that chose BigCommerce because of the no-fee positioning. Worked example: a $1M GMV merchant on Growth processing 40% of orders through PayPal pays an extra $4,000/year on the 1% OPPF alone. A $2M merchant pays $8,000. At those levels, a Shopify migration project starts paying for itself fast.

For context on where the platforms sit in the market: Shopify holds about 29% of US ecommerce platform market share, powers over 5 million active stores, and runs roughly 18,488 apps in its app store as of May 2026. BigCommerce holds around 3% US market share and serves about 130,000 merchants. Most of the ecommerce ecosystem now builds Shopify-first.

Should you actually migrate? A 5-minute decision framework

Migration is a 4-10 week project. Don't start it because someone on LinkedIn said you should. Run the math.

Migrate if most of these are true:

• You use a non-Embedded gateway: PayPal, Klarna, Affirm, or any payment method now subject to the OPPF
• You're crossing a GMV threshold June 1: your platform fee just jumped because of the threshold drops
• You already pay for 6+ apps to fill BC gaps: you're already in app-stack territory; might as well be on the bigger ecosystem
• You want the app ecosystem: Klaviyo, Recharge, Yotpo, Gorgias, Triple Whale all Shopify-first
• You're scaling and need Shopify Plus features: B2B, multi-storefront, headless, scripts

Stay on BigCommerce if most of these are true:

• You're heavy B2B with complex price lists: BC handles per-customer pricing better out of the box
• You hit Shopify's option ceiling: BC allows more product options per item; Shopify caps at 3 options (even with the new 2,048 variant limit)
• You have deep ERP integrations: rewriting NetSuite/SAP webhooks is months of work
• You're a customized BC Enterprise customer: years of custom dev on Stencil don't move easily

The breakeven math, simplified for a $1M GMV merchant moving from BC Growth to Shopify Grow:

Add a migration project at $25K. Payback inside 6-7 years on platform alone, faster once you factor in the app ecosystem and conversion gains most merchants see post-migration. For more on whether to bring in help, check our Shopify replatforming guide.

What transfers vs what doesn't

Here's the clean breakdown. Don't trust an agency that tells you everything moves over. It doesn't.

Two of these deserve more attention.

Passwords don't move. This is a hard security limitation, not a missing feature. Shopify hashes passwords differently than BigCommerce. Every customer gets a "reset your password" prompt on their first login attempt. About 30-40% of them will get confused, miss the email, or call your support line.

Orders import as archived. Your customer's order history shows up, but as historical records, not editable active orders. The order numbers usually change. So when a customer logs in and looks for "Order #1042," they won't find it. They'll find a different number, or they'll think their history is gone. Track this in your ecommerce order tracking flow and prep your support team.

The 8-step BigCommerce to Shopify migration playbook

This is the real timeline. Simpler stores can compress it; complex ones with B2B or ERP need 10-14 weeks. The structure below is the 6-week version.

Step 1: Pre-migration audit (Week 1)

Catalog everything. Total product count. Total SKU count. Total customer count. 12-month order count. Every blog post URL. Every app installed and what it does. Every integration (helpdesk, email, ERP, reviews, subscriptions, loyalty). Every custom code mod.

Export your raw data from BigCommerce: products CSV, customers CSV, orders CSV, blog posts. Save them somewhere safe. This is your fallback if something goes wrong during cutover.

Step 2: Build your Shopify dev store (Week 1-2)

Spin up a Shopify development store (free, unlimited dev stores via the Partners program, or use a trial). Pick your starting theme. Honest opinion: don't pick a free theme. The Dawn theme is fine for testing, but most serious brands buy a paid theme ($180-$350) or hire a designer to build on Liquid.

Configure store basics: currency, tax zones, shipping zones, customer accounts setting, language, payment methods. Connect Shopify Payments now to dodge the third-party gateway fee. For pricing context on Shopify itself, here's the current Shopify pricing: Basic $39/mo, Grow $105/mo, Advanced $399/mo, Plus from $2,300/mo.

Step 3: Pick your migration tool (Week 2)

This is the single most-asked question and most posts skip the real answer. Here's the honest ranking:

Most merchants under 2,000 SKUs and one sales channel get away with Matrixify or LitExtension. Over that, or anything with B2B or ERP, get an agency. See our Shopify migration agency and Shopify migration partner guides for vetting.

Step 4: Migrate data in waves (Week 2-4)

Don't migrate everything at once. Migrate in waves, QA between each, fix issues, then move on.

• Wave 1: products + collections. Run the migration, then spot-check 20 random products. Check variants, prices, SKUs, images, inventory.
• Wave 2: customers. Run the migration, then verify a sample. Make sure addresses are formatted right.
• Wave 3: orders. Imported as archived records. Verify line items match, totals match, customer associations are intact.
• Wave 4: blog posts and pages. Migrate content. Check that internal links inside posts still work or get updated.

Step 5: Build your 301 redirect map (Week 3-4)

This is the most important task in the entire project. Get this right and you keep your SEO. Get it wrong and your organic traffic can drop 50% within weeks, per OyeCommerz analysis on URL structure migrations.

Export your full BigCommerce URL list (use Screaming Frog or a sitemap crawl). Map every URL to its Shopify equivalent.

Key URL structure differences:

• BigCommerce blog: /blog/post-title/
• Shopify blog: /blogs/news/post-title/
• BigCommerce products: flexible URL structure
• Shopify products: always /products/handle
• Shopify collections: always /collections/handle

Load every redirect into Shopify (Online Store > Navigation > URL redirects, or via an app like Easy Redirects for bulk uploads). Stores that map redirects comprehensively retain 95-97% of organic traffic, per the same OyeCommerz analysis.

Step 6: Rebuild apps and integrations (Week 3-5)

Apps don't transfer. You're rebuilding. Here's the typical rebuild list for a mid-market DTC brand:

• Email and SMS: Klaviyo (most common Shopify-native option)
• Reviews: Yotpo or Judge.me
• Subscriptions: Recharge, Skio, or Bold
• Loyalty: Smile, Yotpo Loyalty, or Stamped
• Helpdesk: Gorgias, Richpanel, or Reamaze (Shopify-native pulls customer + order data straight into tickets)
• ERP / IMS / 3PL: rebuild webhooks from scratch
• Customer support phone: keep your number; route it to Ringly or your existing system

Each rebuild takes a few hours to a few days. Block real time for this. Don't squeeze it into the last week. Our guide on the Shopify helpdesk app ecosystem has more on the support stack specifically.

Step 7: Stress test the dev store (Week 5)

Run real test orders end-to-end. Use a real card. Test on mobile and desktop. Test the customer login flow (you'll see the password reset prompt firsthand). Test checkout with every payment method you offer. Test the abandoned cart flow.

Verify your 301s fire correctly. Pick 50 random URLs from the old BC site and visit them. They should all redirect to a real Shopify page (not a 404).

Step 8: Cutover and DNS flip (Week 6)

Pick a low-traffic window. Sunday night around 2am works for most US brands. Run a final delta sync (any orders, customers, or products that came in after your last migration wave).

Then flip DNS. Point your domain at Shopify. Wait for propagation (usually 1-4 hours).

Within 24 hours of launch:

• Resubmit your Shopify XML sitemap to Google Search Console
• Submit the new sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools
• Send the "reset your password" email to your full customer list (more on this below)
• Add a site-wide banner: "We just upgraded to Shopify. Here's what to expect."

For a more granular launch-day list, our Shopify migration checklist walks through the 47-step pre/during/post sequence.

How to keep 95-97% of your SEO traffic during the migration

Three things determine whether you keep traffic or lose it.

One: the 301 redirect map. Every BC URL pointing to a Shopify equivalent. No exceptions. If you don't have a redirect, that URL returns a 404, and Google strips the link equity within weeks. Stores that map redirects comprehensively retain 95-97% of organic traffic. Stores that botch it can lose up to 50% within a month.

Two: don't change other things at the same time. Don't rewrite your meta titles. Don't change your H1s. Don't restructure your collection hierarchy. The platform change is enough. Touch the rest later in a separate optimization phase. Our Shopify SEO guide covers what to do after the dust settles.

Three: monitor obsessively for 30 days. Open Google Search Console daily. Check the Coverage report. Fix any 404s by adding missing 301s. Watch your top 100 keywords in Ahrefs. If anything drops more than 3-5 positions, audit that page's redirect chain.

Don't let an agency tell you SEO is "automatic." It isn't. The redirect map is the single biggest deliverable in the entire project.

What actually breaks during a BigCommerce to Shopify migration

The things we've seen break, in order of frequency:

• Product modifiers and add-ons: BC modifiers don't have a Shopify equivalent. Gift wrap, engraving, custom dropdowns all need apps like Infinite Options or Bold Product Options.
• B2B price lists and customer groups: only on Shopify Plus, and even then, the customer group pricing model is different. Plan a rebuild, not a port.
• Product options over 3 types: even with the 2,048 variant limit, Shopify caps at 3 option types per product. If you have a product with color + size + material + fit, one of them has to go (or move to metafields).
• Subscription products: BC's native subscriptions don't move. Pick Recharge, Skio, or Bold and rebuild.
• Custom checkout fields: Shopify Plus only via Checkout UI Extensions. Scripts are deprecated.
• ERP / accounting webhooks: rebuild from scratch against Shopify Admin API.
• Customer reviews: depends on which review platform you use. Yotpo and Judge.me have import tools; some smaller apps require manual export/import.
• Saved carts: don't transfer. Customers lose them.
• Stored payment methods: don't transfer. Customers must re-add cards on their first post-migration purchase.

None of these are deal-breakers. All of them are surprises if you don't plan for them.

The hidden cost nobody talks about: customer support during cutover

Every Shopify migration generates a spike in customer support volume. We've watched it happen across multiple brands now, and it's predictable enough that you can plan for it.

Three questions flood in during the first 14 days post-launch:

1. "I can't log in." This is the number one issue. Customers get the password reset email, but most miss it or ignore it. When they try to log in with their old password and it fails, they panic. Phone calls spike.

2. "Where's my order?" Order history imported as archived. Order numbers may have changed. A customer who looks for "Order #1042" can't find it. They call to confirm their account is real. See our WISMO calls breakdown for context on how big this category usually is.

3. "Is this the same product?" New theme, fewer reviews carried over, different fonts. Customers who recognize the brand but not the site call to verify they're not on a scam page. This is the most emotional of the three.

If your support team is heads-down doing the migration, they aren't picking up the phones. The phone goes to voicemail. Voicemail rolls to email. Email response times balloon. Customer trust dips at the worst possible moment.

The fix has three parts:

• Email customers 7 days before launch: "We're upgrading our store. You'll need to reset your password on your first login. Click here to do it now."
• Add a homepage banner for the first 14 days: "We recently moved to a new platform. Need help? Reach out."
• Keep your phone line live, with humans or AI: this is where most teams drop the ball.

Ringly.io: AI phone support for Shopify brands

Ringly is AI phone support for Shopify brands. Hiring a phone team scales linearly with call volume. The AI doesn't. Instead of throwing temporary contractors at a 14-day call spike, the AI handles the routine calls so your team can focus on the work that actually moves revenue (which, during a migration, is the migration itself).

The AI answers inbound calls 24/7. It finds orders in your Shopify store, processes returns and exchanges, answers product questions from your knowledge base, and rescues abandoned carts via outbound follow-up. Across 50+ brands, the AI resolves 73% of calls autonomously at roughly $0.42 per resolved call. Calls that need a human escalate cleanly to Gorgias, Richpanel, Reamaze, or whatever helpdesk you already run.

Plans: Grow $349/mo (1,000 minutes), Pro $799/mo (2,500 minutes), Enterprise custom. 14-day free trial on Pro. Live in under an hour. 65% resolution guarantee: if the AI resolves under 65% of your calls in 90 days, we refund the last 3 months.

For brands going through cutover, the play is simple: turn Ringly on a week before launch, let it absorb the spike, evaluate after 30 days. More on the fit in our AI phone agents for Shopify deep dive.

Try Ringly free for 14 days. Setup takes under an hour, and you can pause anytime after cutover.

DIY vs hiring a migration agency

The rule of thumb based on what we've seen:

Go DIY if:

• Under 1,000 products
• Single sales channel (no B2B, no marketplaces)
• No ERP or custom integrations
• You or someone on your team can write CSV imports
• Use: Matrixify or LitExtension, free Shopify dev store

Hire mid-tier help ($5K-$15K) if:

• 1,000-5,000 products
• Light B2B
• A few critical integrations
• You want a managed migration without a full agency engagement

Hire a full agency ($25K-$250K+) if:

• 5,000+ SKUs
• B2B with complex price lists
• Subscription products
• Headless or multi-storefront
• ERP integrations
• Active marketing engine (Klaviyo, Triple Whale, etc.) that needs careful migration

Top BigCommerce-to-Shopify migration agencies in 2026 include Netalico, Praella, Quickfire, and Flux. Retainer pricing typically lands $2,700-$10,000/mo. For ongoing customer service work specific to Shopify, most brands use a separate specialist post-launch.

Post-launch checklist: the first 30 days

The migration isn't over when DNS flips. The first 30 days decide whether the project was actually a success.

• Day 1: Resubmit Shopify sitemap to Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster
• Day 1: Send the "reset your password" email to your full customer list
• Day 1-7: Check 404 reports in GSC daily; add missing 301s within 24 hours
• Day 7: Review support call and ticket volume; tag the top three issues
• Day 14: Pull GA4 organic traffic vs pre-migration baseline. If down more than 5%, audit redirect coverage
• Day 14: Pull Ahrefs rankings on your top 100 keywords. Anything that dropped more than 5 positions, investigate
• Day 21: Validate every integration: email flows, abandoned cart, reviews, subscriptions, ERP sync
• Day 30: Full P&L vs pre-migration. Conversion rate, AOV, refund rate, support volume, organic traffic
• Day 30: Disable the homepage banner. Disable the "we migrated" support macros. Resume normal optimization work, including ecommerce conversion rate optimization

The first 30 days are also when you start to see whether the migration actually moved the conversion rate, AOV, or support volume in the direction you expected. Most brands see a small dip in conversion the first 7-10 days (theme changes, customer confusion) and a steady climb back over 30 days.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a BigCommerce to Shopify migration take? Simple stores with under 1,000 SKUs and no custom integrations can migrate in 4-5 weeks. Most mid-market migrations take 6-10 weeks. Complex migrations with B2B, subscriptions, or ERP integrations usually take 10-14 weeks.

Can I migrate customer passwords from BigCommerce to Shopify? No. Shopify hashes passwords in a different format, so passwords cannot be transferred. Every customer will be prompted to reset their password on first login. Plan for a support spike on day 1-14 as customers work through the reset flow.

What happens to my order history? Orders import as archived historical records, not active editable orders. Customers can still see their past purchases in their account, but the order numbers may change. Use a migration tool like Matrixify or LitExtension to preserve the most metadata.

Will I lose SEO rankings during the migration? Not if you do the 301 redirect map correctly. Stores with comprehensive redirects retain 95-97% of organic traffic, per industry data. Stores that skip or botch redirects can lose up to 50% of organic traffic within weeks.

How much does a BigCommerce to Shopify migration cost? DIY with a tool like Matrixify or LitExtension runs $79-$200. Mid-tier managed migrations run $5,000-$15,000. Full agency engagements for complex stores run $25,000 to $250,000+. Retainer pricing for ongoing migration support is typically $2,700-$10,000/mo.

Can I migrate my BigCommerce theme to Shopify? No. BigCommerce themes are built in Stencil; Shopify themes are built in Liquid. You'll need to either pick a Shopify theme (free or paid, $180-$350 typical) or have a designer build a custom one. Plan 1-3 weeks of theme work depending on complexity.

What is the BigCommerce 2026 Open Payment Provider Fee? A new fee BigCommerce introduced on June 1, 2026. Charged on every order processed through a non-Embedded gateway: 2% on Core, 1% on Growth, 0.6% on Scale, custom on Performance. Applies to offline orders and B2B purchase orders too.

How do I keep customer support running during the cutover? Email customers 7 days ahead about the password reset, add a homepage banner explaining the migration, pre-load helpdesk macros for the three most common questions, and keep your phone line live (with AI or humans) for the first 14 days when call volume spikes.

The bottom line

The 2026 BigCommerce pricing reset tipped the math for a lot of merchants. If you're on a non-Embedded gateway, if you crossed a GMV threshold on June 1, or if you've been paying for a stack of third-party apps to fill BigCommerce gaps, you should at least run the breakeven calc.

The playbook works. 6-10 weeks, real money, real risk, real upside on app ecosystem and cost predictability. The technical migration is the easy part. The week your customers can't log in is the hard part.

Plan for the support spike. Keep your phone line live. Send the password reset email a week early. Map every 301 before you flip DNS. And don't change your theme, your collections, and your meta titles all at once.

If you're going through a migration and want phones covered through the cutover, start a free trial of Ringly. Live in under an hour, no credit card to start.