Every Shopify migration cost article tells you the same thing: it can run $500, or it can run $200,000. Both are right. Neither helps.

If you've been scoping a move to Shopify, you've already seen the 10x range problem. Two agencies look at what feels like the same project and one quotes $18K, the other $90K. You can't tell who's overscoping and who's setting you up to blow the budget at month three.

Here's what this guide does differently. We'll break Shopify migration cost down by source platform, by component, and across 12 months (not just the one-time fee). We'll name the line items most quotes leave out, including the post-launch support spike that almost nobody plans for. And we'll show you the real decision tree for picking the right tier for your store.

By the end, you should be able to look at a quote and tell whether it's reasonable, light, or padded.

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.

Shopify migration cost at a glance

Five tiers, five very different price points. Most stores fit one of them cleanly. The rest get into trouble by picking the wrong tier for what they actually need.

The numbers cluster like that for a reason. Each tier has a different success rate.

DIY and apps move data fine. They don't reliably handle 301 redirects, integration work, or anything that touches SEO. According to Honcho Search's migration SEO research, botched redirects can cost 30-50% of organic traffic with recovery taking up to a year. That makes "cheap migration" the most expensive option for any SEO-dependent store.

If you want a deeper breakdown of when each agency tier is worth the money, our Shopify migration agency guide covers it.

What you're actually paying for

Every agency quote is a stack of line items. Some agencies break them out. Others give you one total. Either way, the budget always goes to the same places.

Here's how a typical $25,000 mid-market project distributes:

A few things to notice.

Theme and custom development together usually run 50% of the budget on a real project. That's where scope creep lives. A founder asks for "just one more touch" on the design or a custom upsell flow and the line item grows.

Presta's 2026 component breakdown puts theme work alone in a $2,000-$120,000 range. The spread tells you everything: a starter theme barely customized vs. a full custom design are fundamentally different projects under the same heading.

SEO setup is the one line item where cutting cost hurts you the most. Don't shop that one.

Migration cost by source platform

Your source platform changes everything. The data shape, the integration patterns, the SEO baggage, the customizations you've stacked over the years. A clean BigCommerce store moves faster than a 6-year-old Magento install with 14 custom modules.

Here's the matrix for mid-market migrations (around 1,000 SKUs, some custom work):

A few platform-specific notes.

Magento. This is the biggest cost. URL structures are deeply embedded in how Magento sites rank. ERP, PIM, and B2B portal integrations often cost more than the migration itself. According to Ecomm Solutions' Magento-to-Shopify analysis, Magento's total cost of ownership ran $50,000-$150,000 per year in hosting, maintenance, and developer costs before the move. That's partly why brands migrate at all. Our Magento to Shopify migration guide covers the breakdown more deeply.

BigCommerce. Cleaner data than Magento. But if you're a B2B brand using BigCommerce's price lists, quotes, and approval flows, you're looking at heavy checkout work to replicate the behavior on Shopify. See our BigCommerce to Shopify migration guide for the platform-specific traps.

WooCommerce. The data migration is the easy part. The expensive part is replacing your plugin stack with Shopify apps. A WooCommerce store moving from WordPress running 15 plugins for $200/mo can land on Shopify paying $500-$1,500/mo for the same functionality.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware). Custom cartridges don't transfer. Plan for a full rebuild of the front-end. Our Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify guide and Shopify Plus vs Commerce Cloud comparison walk through the cost gap.

Wix and Squarespace. Cheap to move but the data export tools are limited. Customer accounts, order history, and SEO redirects all need workarounds.

The real 12-month total cost of migration

Here's the part most articles skip. Your "$35,000 migration" is not what migration actually costs you.

Migration cost has three parts:

1. The one-time agency build
2. The recurring monthly stack (Shopify plan, apps, retainer)
3. The post-launch operational spike

Add them up over 12 months and you get the Total Cost of Migration (TCM), which is the number that matters.

Worked example: a $2.5M revenue brand moving from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus.

The headline quote was $35,000. Year 1 reality is about 3x that.

Plus is the part most brands underestimate. According to Ask Phill's Plus pricing analysis, the real Plus cost is typically 2-4x the platform fee once you add apps, dev, and integrations. Broken Rubik's 2026 guide puts real monthly Plus cost in the $4,000-$10,000 range for live brands.

If you're scoping migration without a TCM model, you're not scoping migration. You're scoping the deposit.

If you'd rather not staff up phone support to handle the post-launch volume, try Ringly free for 14 days and have AI phone support live before cutover.

Shopify monthly fees in 2026 (the recurring half of the bill)

The platform fee is the part you keep paying. Most migration articles bury this in a footnote. We're going to put it in a table.

A few things worth knowing.

Plus pricing flips to revenue-based for high-GMV brands. Once you cross certain monthly thresholds, you pay 0.25% of GMV instead of the flat fee (whichever is higher). For brands doing $1M-$2M per month, this is a real number.

Transaction fees compound. A $5M brand on Advanced vs Plus (2.5% + 30¢) pays roughly $135,000/yr in card processing. Same brand on Plus (0.18%) pays closer to $9,000. The transaction fee savings alone can fund Plus.

Annual billing saves about 25% across Basic, Grow, and Advanced. If you're committed to Shopify, just pay annually.

Hidden costs nobody puts in the quote

Quotes show what's billable. They don't always show what's expensive.

• Data cleanup before migration: This is the hidden cost almost every budget misses. One documented mid-size fashion migration had data cleanup run 6 weeks and consume 30% of the total project cost. Magento and WooCommerce stores tend to carry years of orphaned categories, duplicate customer records, and inconsistent product attributes.
• App replacement subscriptions: We touched on this above. A WooCommerce store paying $200/mo in plugins commonly lands at $500-$1,500/mo in Shopify apps. Over 3 years that's $11K-$47K nobody put in the model.
• SEO redirect mapping and monitoring: $5,000-$20,000 done well. Skip it and you risk that 30-50% organic traffic loss we mentioned earlier.
• Customer account and password resets: Saved carts disappear. Account flags reset. Your support inbox absorbs the fallout for two to four weeks.
• Email and SMS deliverability re-auth: Domains, DKIM, DMARC. Sending reputation can dip while DNS propagates. Some emails bounce, some get filtered.
• Post-launch phone support spike: WISMO calls explode after cutover. People can't find their accounts. Order IDs look different. Calls 2-4x for a few weeks. Most plans budget zero for this. We covered this in detail in WISMO calls and how AI handles them.
• Discovery phase: Good agencies require a $4,000-$8,000 discovery phase (roughly 2 weeks) before the build quote. Bad ones skip it and underquote. If you're being quoted a $40K project without discovery, the agency is guessing.
• Contingency buffer: 15-20% on any agency project. Not optional.

The agencies that underquote you in week one are the ones billing change orders in week eight.

How to pick the right migration tier

Most pricing articles list tiers without telling you how to choose. Here's the decision tree.

Choose DIY (Shopify Store Importer) if:

• Under 500 SKUs
• No custom checkout
• Minimal SEO dependency (you don't rank for much, or you're starting fresh)
• You're willing to lose some data fidelity

Choose a migration app (LitExtension, Cart2Cart, MigrationPro) if:

• 500-5,000 SKUs
• Simple data structure
• A few thousand customer records
• You don't have complex integrations
• According to Capterra, LitExtension scores 4.7/5 across 350+ reviews and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on automated migrations. Pricing typically lands $59-$1,500 depending on entity count.

Choose a freelancer or small agency ($1,500-$8,000) if:

• Clean data
• Standard Shopify apps will do the job
• No Plus or heavy integrations
• You're comfortable managing the project

Choose a full-service agency ($8,000-$50,000) if:

• You're mid-market
• You need custom design work
• You have integrations (helpdesk, ERP, subscription, loyalty)
• You want one team owning the whole project

Choose a Shopify Plus partner ($25,000-$250,000+) if:

• $5M+ in revenue
• B2B, wholesale, or multi-store
• Headless or international
• You need someone who understands enterprise tax, compliance, and ERP-grade integrations
• Our Shopify migration partner guide and Shopify Plus partner agency guide go deeper

The mistake is picking up. A $2M store that books a $40K agency build doesn't get a better launch. It gets a slower one with more change orders.

Does Shopify Plus migration actually pay back?

For $5M+ stores, the Plus payback math usually works. Here's the rough version.

A brand doing $5M/yr on Shopify Advanced pays roughly $135,000/yr in transaction fees (2.5% + 30¢ per order, online rate). The same volume on Plus pays around $9,000/yr at the reduced Plus-tier transaction rate. That's $126,000 in transaction-fee savings before you count anything else.

Plus base fee is $2,300/mo ($27,600/yr on a 3-year term). Add apps and dev to get to a real $5,000-$10,000/mo, call it $90,000/yr. Net savings vs. Advanced: roughly $30,000-$50,000/yr at the $5M revenue level.

That's why most analyses (including Ask Phill's 2026 Plus ROI breakdown) put the Plus payback window at 12-18 months for $5M+ stores. Below $5M, the math gets fuzzy. Below $2M, it usually doesn't work at all.

Our Shopify Plus benefits writeup and Shopify Plus implementation guide cover the rest of the ROI levers (B2B, checkout, multi-store, headless).

When not to migrate

Migration is a project. Sometimes the right answer is to fix the thing on the platform you already have.

Don't migrate if:

• The problem is fixable without migration. Slow Magento? Caching, code audit, or PHP version bump might fix it for $5K. A bad theme? Hire a Shopify dev for a refresh instead.
• You're inside 90 days of peak season. Almost everyone misses this. Migrating in October for a December peak is how brands lose Q4.
• You don't have a redirect map plan. You will lose traffic. The math says no.
• Your team is already burnt out. Migration is a 3-12 month attention tax. If you can't give it that, you can't do it.

Our replatforming guide calls this out: "don't replatform if the real problem is fixable without it."

How to keep migration cost down without sabotaging quality

You can cut costs intelligently. The trick is knowing what to cut.

• Clean your data BEFORE you brief: Agencies bill data cleanup at $150-$250/hr. Remove duplicate customer records, fix product attributes, archive old orders. A day of cleanup saves a week of billable hours.
• Use a starter theme: A polished starter theme is $200-$350. Full custom design is $20,000-$50,000+. Most brands can ship beautifully on a customized starter.
• Don't migrate orders older than 12 months: Keep them in a static archive. Most stores only need recent orders live.
• Phase the launch: Ship an MVP first, then add the loyalty app, subscription engine, and custom upsell logic in a second pass. Phased migrations cost less than perfect-Day-One launches.
• Negotiate the retainer up front: Bake post-launch support into the contract. Hourly billing after launch is where margins disappear.
• Use Shopify native before paying for apps: Shopify Email, Shop App, Shopify Inbox, native discounts. Native first, app second.

Our Shopify migration timeline guide lays out how to phase the work so cost stays predictable.

The post-launch support spike most plans miss

Now for the line item nobody puts in the quote.

For 4-8 weeks after launch, your support volume spikes. Here's what drives it:

• Customer accounts reset. People can't log in. Saved carts are gone.
• Order IDs look different on Shopify. Customers asking "where's my order" can't find it.
• 301 redirects misfire for a few percent of traffic until you clean them up.
• Email deliverability hiccups while you reauthenticate domains.
• The new checkout flow surfaces friction that needs days of A/B testing to smooth out.

Most brands handle this in one of two ways. They hire a temp contractor ($4,000-$8,000 for the spike window) or they staff overtime. Either way, it's real money that wasn't in the quote.

There's a third option: have AI phone support live before cutover so the spike doesn't land on a human team at all.

Ringly.io is AI phone support for Shopify brands. Phone support, without the payroll. 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 more on how this works for ecommerce, see Shopify voice agents, AI phone agents for Shopify, and 24/7 ecommerce phone support.

Ready to keep phone support live through the post-launch spike? Start your free trial of Ringly. Setup takes about three minutes.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Shopify migration cost on average? For a real mid-market project (1,000-5,000 SKUs, custom design, light integrations), expect $15,000-$50,000 one-time and $50,000-$120,000 Year 1 total including platform, apps, and retainer. DIY moves can run under $1,000. Plus partner builds for enterprise routinely hit $100,000+.

Is migrating to Shopify worth the cost? For stores doing $1M+/yr with Magento or custom platform pain, usually yes. Plus migrations for $5M+ stores typically pay back in 12-18 months through performance and transaction-fee savings. Don't migrate if your problem is fixable on your current platform.

How much does it cost to migrate from Magento to Shopify? Most mid-size Magento-to-Shopify migrations land $20,000-$75,000, with large enterprise projects $75,000-$200,000+. Magento's URL hierarchy, ERP integrations, and accumulated data debt drive the spread. Our Magento to Shopify guide goes deeper.

How much does it cost to migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify? Mid-market BigCommerce-to-Shopify projects run $15,000-$40,000 with Plus builds reaching $50,000-$150,000. B2B and checkout customizations are the cost drivers. Cleaner data than Magento, so simpler stores can ship under $10,000.

What's the cheapest way to migrate to Shopify? Shopify's free Store Importer or a migration app like LitExtension ($59-$1,500). Cheapest works only if you have under 5,000 SKUs, no custom integrations, and limited SEO dependency. For SEO-sensitive stores, the "cheap" option costs you traffic, which costs more than the agency would have.

How much does Shopify Plus cost per month in 2026? Plus starts at $2,300/mo on a 3-year term or $2,500/mo on a 1-year term, with variable GMV-based pricing above thresholds. Real monthly cost lands $4,000-$10,000+ once you factor in apps, dev, and the rest of the stack. See our Shopify Plus benefits writeup for the ROI math.

How long does a Shopify migration take? Simple stores ship in 2-4 weeks. Mid-market with custom theme work runs 4-8 weeks. Plus or enterprise migrations run 12-24+ weeks. Our Shopify migration timeline guide breaks it down week-by-week.

The takeaway

Migration is not a $35,000 project. It's a $100,000 Year 1 if you're doing it seriously.

The brands that get burned are the ones who scoped only the one-time fee. The brands that come out clean budget for the Shopify monthly, the app stack, the retainer, and the post-launch spike too.

Two things move the dial more than anything else:

1. Pick the right tier for your store. A $2M store doesn't need a Plus partner. A $20M B2B brand can't ship on a freelancer.
2. Plan for the post-launch spike. Phone, inbox, redirects. The first 4-8 weeks are where the savings or the disasters happen.

If you want one fewer thing to plan, Ringly.io handles phone support automatically across the spike and after. Try it free for 14 days.

Article by Ruben Boonzaaijer. Co-founder of Ringly.io. We build AI phone support for Shopify brands so they can scale support without hiring a phone team.