Moving From BigCommerce to Shopify: What Comes Across, and What Needs Rebuilding

Moving from BigCommerce to Shopify is a move between two hosted platforms. There is no server to retire, and both sides have proper APIs, so the data comes across well. What goes wrong sits in the eight places where the two platforms model a store differently, and they are predictable.

Here they are, in the order they tend to bite. If you are still deciding whether to move at all, work through our replatforming checklist first.

1. Every URL changes

This is the one that costs money. BigCommerce’s default format, SEO Optimized (Short), puts products and categories straight off the root of the domain, as /product-name and /category-name. Shopify uses /products/ and /collections/, and those paths are fixed. Even a store on BigCommerce’s long format, which already uses /products/, should not assume its product URLs survive: map every one, because any difference in the ending, such as .html, breaks the match. Its category URLs change too, because Shopify calls them collections.

Two things make the BigCommerce inventory bigger than it looks:

• Customised URLs. Product URLs can be edited one at a time, and some stores use a custom format built from placeholders such as the SKU. Build the redirect list from the URLs the store actually serves, not from the setting.
• Existing redirects. BigCommerce creates a 301 redirect automatically whenever a product, category or web page is renamed, so a mature store holds years of them. Export the list as a CSV and point every old address straight at its new Shopify home, not at another redirect.

Shopify’s URL redirects take a CSV import, so the mechanics are easy. The hard part is the inventory. Get it right and rankings dip briefly during reindexing and recover. Get it wrong and you throw away years of search equity on launch day. We treat the redirect map as a deliverable in our e-commerce migration work, not a task.

2. Shopify’s own importer does not cover BigCommerce

Shopify’s Store Migration app imports from Square, WooCommerce, Etsy, Wix, Amazon, eBay, Clover and Lightspeed R/X. BigCommerce is not on the list. The data moves through a third-party app or the two platforms’ APIs instead.

Matrixify is the tool most people find first. It connects to BigCommerce with read-only API credentials and migrates products, categories as collections, customers including store credit, orders, and coupons and promotions as Shopify discounts. It also creates redirects from the old product and category URLs. Web pages, blog posts and BigCommerce’s existing redirect list still need adding.

Its dry run produces a spreadsheet you can review and edit before importing. That is where the product restructuring below happens.

3. Customer passwords do not come across

Customer passwords cannot be migrated into Shopify from another store, so accounts arrive without them. Shopify’s new customer accounts soften this: customers sign in with a six-digit code sent to their email, and no password is needed.

Send an email before launch anyway. A regular customer who suddenly cannot log in the way they used to will assume something is broken.

4. Options and modifiers need restructuring

Variant counts are not the problem: BigCommerce caps a product at 600 SKUs, and Shopify allows up to 2,048 variants. The constraint is options: Shopify still allows only three options per product, such as size, colour and material. A BigCommerce product built on four or more variant options has to be split into separate products, or have some options moved into metafields.

Modifiers are the bigger change. On BigCommerce a modifier is a choice that does not change the SKU being fulfilled, such as text to be engraved or a checkbox for shipping insurance. Shopify has no modifier type. The usual replacement is line item properties: fields on the product form that capture text or a file upload and attach it to the order. That is theme work or an app. A modifier that adjusts the price is logic rather than data, and needs rebuilding.

Decide all of this early, because it affects the storefront design, the filters and the URLs.

5. Custom fields become metafields

BigCommerce custom fields are simple name and value pairs, up to 200 per product, and they appear on the product page by default. Many stores use them as a specification table.

Shopify’s equivalent is metafields, which need a definition before they are useful. They also do not appear on their own: a theme that supports dynamic sources can connect them in the theme editor, and otherwise it takes theme code. Treat this as a data decision, not a copy job. Some custom fields become metafields, some become tags, and some are leftovers nobody reads.

6. B2B Edition does not map one to one

BigCommerce B2B Edition adds company accounts, a buyer portal, sales rep quoting and masquerade, shared shopping lists and an invoice portal. Shopify’s B2B is native, and since 2 April 2026 the basics are on every plan from Basic up: company profiles, payment terms, volume pricing and up to three active B2B catalogues. Unlimited catalogues, catalogues assigned to individual companies for customer-specific pricing, deposits and partial payments remain Shopify Plus only.

So list what B2B Edition does for you today, feature by feature, and map each one to Shopify native, an app or custom work. Then test with real trade accounts before cutover. More on our B2B e-commerce work.

7. Multi-storefront becomes Markets or expansion stores

BigCommerce Multi-Storefront runs several storefronts from one store. Each can have its own domain, theme, categories, price lists and currencies, while sharing one catalogue, and orders from all of them arrive in one place. Shopify splits that job across two tools:

• Markets, inside one store, for selling to different regions. Each market can have its own currency, catalogue of products and prices, domain and language settings, and duty and tax settings.
• Expansion stores, on Shopify Plus, for genuinely separate storefronts. Plus includes up to ten stores, one main and nine expansion, but they are separate stores: products, collections, inventory and settings do not sync between them without an app or ERP.

Australian and New Zealand storefronts usually map to Markets, for the reasons in selling to Australia and New Zealand from one store. Two brands with different themes and ranges usually means expansion stores, plus a plan for keeping them in sync.

8. Apps become apps, settings or custom work

Each BigCommerce app has to land somewhere on Shopify: a built-in setting, a Shopify app, or custom work. Make the list in business terms, “trade customers see a different price”, not the app’s name.

Three Shopify changes matter when scoping custom work:

• Custom apps are created in the Dev Dashboard. Since 1 January 2026 new custom apps cannot be created in the Shopify admin. More on when a custom app is worth building.
• Shopify Scripts are gone. They stopped running on 30 June 2026. Discount, shipping and payment logic now belongs in Shopify Functions.
• Functions in custom apps need Plus. Public apps containing Functions work on any plan, but custom apps containing them run only on Shopify Plus.

What moves easily

For balance, the parts that are usually straightforward:

• Products, with descriptions, images, prices, variants and inventory, once the options are settled.
• Categories, as collections.
• Customers, as records, just without passwords.
• Order history, so customers can still see past orders.
• Content, web pages and blog posts, though every one needs its redirect.

Is it worth it?

Often, yes, but not for the reasons people leave WooCommerce. Both platforms are hosted, so nobody is escaping servers and patching. The case is about fit: the apps and integrations you want, and a platform your team knows.

Where it is not worth it: a store whose value sits in B2B Edition’s quoting and invoicing, or in several storefronts sharing one catalogue. Both can be rebuilt on Shopify, but often only on Plus and with apps, so do that sum before you decide.

Our Shopify-certified developers plan migrations around the URLs, data and integrations first and the storefront second. More on our Shopify development work.

---

Sources: BigCommerce Help Center: SEO fields and URL structure, BigCommerce Help Center: 301 redirects, BigCommerce Help Center: platform limits, BigCommerce Help Center: Multi-Storefront, BigCommerce: variants, variant options and modifier options, BigCommerce: introduction to B2B Edition, Shopify Store Migration app, Matrixify: migrate your BigCommerce store to Shopify, Shopify Help Center: URL redirects, Shopify Help Center: variants, Shopify Help Center: B2B plan features, Shopify Help Center: expansion stores, and Shopify Scripts will be deprecated on June 30, 2026 (Shopify developer changelog).