Transfer BigCommerce to Shopify: The Migration Plan and an Honest Comparison

The hardest part of moving from BigCommerce isn’t the data. It’s the options. BigCommerce lets a product carry up to 250 options. Shopify allows three. If your bestseller is a configurable product with six dropdowns, it can’t arrive in Shopify the way it left.

That one difference decides how long it takes to transfer BigCommerce to Shopify, what it costs, and whether you should move at all. So we’ll start with the honest comparison, then the migration plan.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: the honest comparison

Both platforms are hosted, mature and capable of running a serious store. The differences are in the details, and the details are where migrations get expensive.

A few notes on sources. The variant limit comes from Shopify’s developer changelog. BigCommerce renamed its plans (Standard → Core, Plus → Growth, Pro → Scale) and added the Open Payment Provider fee on June 1, 2026; check the BigCommerce plan update page and shopify.com/pricing for current numbers rather than trusting any blog, including this one.

Takeaway: if your catalog lives on many options per product, BigCommerce has a real edge. If it doesn’t, Shopify’s ecosystem, themes and Markets usually win.

When we’d tell you to stay on BigCommerce

We run Shopify stores and sell Shopify migrations, so weigh this accordingly. But there are stores that shouldn’t move:

• Heavy configurators. Dozens of options per product, priced modifiers, conditional rules. You can rebuild it on Shopify, but you’re paying for an app or custom code to reproduce what you already have.
• A complex B2B Edition setup with many price lists per customer and you’re not ready for Shopify Plus.
• A checkout that depends on custom scripts you can’t replace with Shopify’s extensions.

If none of those apply and you’re fighting sales-based plan jumps, a thin theme ecosystem or multi-country selling, moving makes sense.

Takeaway: stay if your store’s value is in its configurator. Move if it’s in its brand, content and markets.

Step 1: audit the catalog before you touch any tool

Export a product list with option counts. Sort by options per product. Everything with more than three needs a decision:

• Split one option axis into separate products (e.g. material).
• Move a non-price option to a line-item property (e.g. engraving text).
• Use metafields for specs that don’t change price or stock.
• Use an options app when the configurator is the product.

Do the same for customer groups, coupons, gift certificates, store credit and blog. Each needs a Shopify destination before import day.

Lab note

Zubra Colors, one of our own Shopify stores, carries 157 products and 617 variants across 14 languages and 5 markets. Every one of those products fits Shopify’s three-option model. That’s not luck; it’s decided at the spreadsheet stage, per product family, before anything is imported. On a BigCommerce migration, that same decision is most of the project.

Takeaway: the option remodel is the migration. The import just executes it.

Step 2: choose how to transfer BigCommerce to Shopify

Shopify’s help center doesn’t document a BigCommerce-specific import path, so most moves use a migration app or a developer.

Matrixify’s BigCommerce tutorial documents what it moves via the BigCommerce API: products, categories as collections, customers including store credit balances, orders, coupons as Shopify discounts, and redirects from old URLs. Two catches from its own docs: missing API scopes mean that data type simply doesn’t import, and images embedded inside product descriptions need to be uploaded to Shopify Files separately.

Takeaway: create read-only API credentials with every scope you need, then do a test run of 20 products, customers and orders before the full import.

Step 3: map customer groups and B2B

BigCommerce customer groups do double duty: retail discounts and wholesale pricing. Shopify splits those jobs.

• Retail groups (VIP, staff, newsletter) → customer tags plus segments and discounts.
• Wholesale groups → Shopify B2B: companies, locations, catalogs and payment terms. Since April 2026 these are available on Basic, Grow and Advanced, with up to three catalogs; unlimited catalogs still need Plus.

If you run more than three wholesale price tiers, that limit is the first number to check. Our Shopify wholesale guide shows how we structure B2B next to retail, and Is Shopify Plus worth it? covers when the upgrade pays off.

Takeaway: don’t import customer groups as-is. Decide which ones are discounts and which are wholesale accounts.

Step 4: BigCommerce to Shopify redirects

BigCommerce product and category URLs often sit at the root (/blue-mug/, /mugs/) or under custom paths. Shopify forces /products/, /collections/, /pages/ and /blogs/<name>/. Every URL moves.

1. Crawl the live store and export Search Console pages with impressions over the last 12 months.
2. Map each old URL to its Shopify equivalent, keeping handles where possible.
3. Use the migration tool’s redirect output, then check it against your crawl: tools only redirect URLs they know about.
4. Import into Shopify’s URL redirects and crawl the old list against the new store.
5. Carry over page titles, meta descriptions and image alt text.

Then, after switch-over, check Search Console and 404s weekly for 30 days.

Takeaway: a category URL with years of backlinks deserves its own row in the map, not a wildcard guess.

Step 5: test, switch over, and monitor

• Place real test orders in every market, with and without discounts.
• Compare counts: products, variants, customers, orders per year, store credit balances.
• Freeze BigCommerce orders for a few hours, run a delta import, point the domain, submit the sitemap.
• Tell customers how to sign in. Passwords can’t move on any platform, and Shopify’s new customer accounts use a one-time email code instead.

Takeaway: keep BigCommerce running (read-only) for a month after launch. You’ll want it for the one report nobody remembered.

What changes the day after you move

It’s worth being clear-eyed about life after you transfer BigCommerce to Shopify, because the switch changes how you work, not just where your data lives.

You’ll gain: a larger app ecosystem, a wider choice of themes (including Shopify’s own Horizon), native Markets for selling across countries and languages, and plans that don’t jump because your trailing 12-month sales crossed a line.

You’ll lose, or have to rebuild: native modifiers and large option sets, anything that depended on BigCommerce checkout scripts, and the admin habits your team built over years. Budget a few hours of training for whoever processes orders and edits products.

You’ll need to decide: whether to use Shopify Payments. If you stay on another gateway, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of your gateway’s. For many stores, that single decision affects running costs more than the plan choice. Our Shopify fees guide breaks down how it works.

Takeaway: the platform switch is a week. Getting your team fluent in Shopify is a month. Plan for both.

What a BigCommerce to Shopify migration costs

Industry pricing guides (blackbeltcommerce.com, shopexperts.com) put mid-size BigCommerce or WooCommerce migrations of 500–5,000 SKUs at roughly $8–30k. Configurators, B2B and ERP links push it toward the top of that range.

Our Migration M starts at $8,500 for BigCommerce stores up to 5,000 SKUs, including customers, orders and 301s; larger or ERP-connected stores are scoped as Migration L after a call. Details on the pricing page. Coming from WordPress instead? See the WooCommerce to Shopify guide.

Count your options before you count your costs

Sort your BigCommerce catalog by options per product. If almost everything has three or fewer, you’re looking at a clean, predictable move. If your bestsellers have six, the real conversation is about rebuilding a configurator, and that’s worth having before anyone quotes you.

Send us that export on the migration page and we’ll tell you which bucket you’re in, with a fixed quote and a week-by-week plan. Or start with the free Store Scan if you’re still weighing BigCommerce vs Shopify.