Shopify migration tools, compared.

Shopify migration tools: what each one does well, and where the work is left to you

Several good tools can move a store to Shopify, and most merchants look at the same four: Cart2Cart, LitExtension, Matrixify and Shopify’s own Store Migration app. We use them too. We are a Cart2Cart Platinum partner, and on many projects a tool does part of the work. This guide compares them fairly, explains what each is built for and how it is priced, and sets out the parts of a migration that no automated tool handles well, so you can decide whether a tool alone is enough or whether a managed migration is worth paying for.

The short answer

A tool alone is usually enough when the store is small, the catalog uses simple variants, the order history is short or only needed for reference, and a few days of cleanup after launch would not hurt the business. In that case a demo migration, a full run and a careful check will get you most of the way for a modest fee.

A managed migration is worth it when the store has years of order history, split shipments with tracking numbers, refunds and store credit, options that change the price, B2B customers with their own pricing, a large set of ranking URLs, or simply cannot afford to be wrong on launch day. Those are the parts where tools are weakest, and they are the parts customers and accountants notice first.

The tools at a glance

Tool	Best for	How it is priced	What it leaves to you
Cart2Cart	Automated moves from a long list of platforms, with a free demo first	By the number of products, customers and orders, plus paid additional options; optional service packages and Migration Insurance for remigrations	Tracking numbers, refund accuracy, redirect quality, option pricing, design
LitExtension	Automated moves from 140+ platforms, with a hands-on service tier	By total entities, starting at $59 for the automated plan; an All-in-One service with a personal assistant; 30-day money-back guarantee	Much the same as Cart2Cart: fulfillment detail, refunds, URL inventory, design
Matrixify	Spreadsheet imports, bulk edits and migrations where you control every column	Shopify app plans billed every 30 days: free Demo, Basic $20, Big $50, Enterprise $200, with per-job limits	Extracting and shaping the source data into its template
Shopify Store Migration	Products and customers from supported platforms, at no cost	Free	Order history, redirects, reviews, anything beyond products and customers
Managed migration (RDA)	Stores with long history, complex catalogs or no margin for error	From $2,500 for stores under 500 products and 5,000 orders ($3,500 for larger stores); B2B, multi-store and integrations are a fixed price after the audit	Nothing on the data side; you review samples and sign off

Cart2Cart

Cart2Cart is an automated, hosted migration service that has been running for more than ten years. It lists 80+ platforms as sources for Shopify, including WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Wix and PrestaShop, and it can also take a CSV. You connect the source and the Shopify store, choose the entities and options, and the migration runs on Cart2Cart’s side. On Shopify it moves products, categories as collections, manufacturers, customers, orders, reviews, CMS pages and blog posts, among other entities.

• Demo first. A free demo migration moves a small sample so you can check how the data lands before paying.
• Pricing. The price depends on the source and target platforms and the number of products, customers and orders, with additional options priced on top. Service packages bundle a set number of entities with technical support and remigrations, and Migration Insurance adds restarts within a set period.
• Options. Depending on the source, these include preserving order IDs, keeping SEO URLs and creating 301 redirects, migrating images embedded in descriptions, and Recent Data Migration for orders and customers created after the main run.
• Two ways in. Cart2Cart runs a full web dashboard and also Shopify apps. In our experience the in-app flow caps at 1,000 products or orders, so larger stores should use the full dashboard.

We use Cart2Cart ourselves when it fits, most often for products and customers. From our own projects, order tracking numbers do not come across, so shipped orders arrive without their carrier and tracking details.

LitExtension

LitExtension is also a hosted, automated service. It lists 140+ source platforms, runs on its own servers so nothing is installed on your computer, and keeps running if you close the browser. For Shopify it moves products with variants, attributes, images and SKUs, customers and addresses, orders, coupons, reviews, CMS pages, blog posts and multiple languages.

• Pricing. Priced on the total number of entities migrated; LitExtension shows the automated plan starting at $59. Both plans carry a 30-day money-back guarantee and unlimited free demo migrations.
• After the main run. Free and unlimited Recent Migration and Smart Update, plus two free re-migrations.
• Options. 301 redirects, preserving order IDs, clearing Shopify data before import, migrating embedded images, stripping HTML from names and turning categories into automated collections.
• All-in-One Migration. A service tier where LitExtension’s team runs the migration with a personal assistant, in-house testing and all additional options included.
• Support. Advertised as 24/7 by chat, email and phone.

LitExtension states plainly that customer passwords do not migrate, because each platform encrypts them differently.

Matrixify

Matrixify, formerly Excelify, is a Shopify app for bulk import and export through Excel, CSV and Google Sheets. It is not a hosted migration service in the same sense: it works inside your Shopify store, and you decide exactly what goes into each column. That makes it the most precise of the four, and also the one that asks the most of you.

• What it can import. Products, collections, customers, B2B companies, discounts, draft orders, orders, pages, blog posts, redirects, files, metafields and metaobjects.
• Orders in detail. The orders template carries transactions, refund lines, and fulfillments with tracking number and company, and it keeps the original order name.
• Sources. Guided migrations for Magento, BigCommerce, Lightspeed, WooCommerce and WordPress; anything else is converted to the Matrixify template first. A Dry Run shows the result before anything is written.
• Plans. Demo is free with a 10-item limit per job. Basic is $20 per 30 days (5,000 products, 2,000 customers, 1,000 orders per job), Big is $50 (50,000, 20,000 and 10,000), and Enterprise is $200 with no per-job limits. Plans can be changed at any time.

The catch is the source side. For some platforms, orders have to be exported and converted to the template by hand, and getting refunds, split shipments and option prices right in that spreadsheet is exactly the skilled part of a migration. Matrixify is also useful long after launch, for bulk edits and scheduled exports.

Shopify’s Store Migration app

Store Migration is a free app built by Shopify for importing product and customer data. It connects directly to Square, WooCommerce, Etsy, Wix, Amazon, eBay, Clover and Lightspeed R and X series (Vend), and it accepts CSV files exported from other platforms. Shopify’s own listing notes that some platforms do not export all data or use compatible formats, so small edits in Shopify may be needed afterward.

It is a good starting point for a small catalog on a supported platform. It is not built for order history, redirects or reviews, so a store that needs those plans another route for them. Shopify’s help center says to import products first, then customers, then historical orders, so orders can link to both.

What automated tools do not handle well

None of this is a criticism of any one tool. These are hard problems because the source platforms store the data differently from Shopify, and a generic mapping cannot know how your store used it.

• Tracking numbers on split shipments. An order shipped in three boxes needs three fulfillments, each with its own items, carrier and tracking number. Tools tend to mark the whole order fulfilled, or unfulfilled, and drop the tracking.
• Refunds and store credit. A refunded or partly refunded order often lands as plainly paid, which overstates revenue in Shopify reports. Store credit and gift card balances need their own mapping to Shopify gift cards or store credit.
• Option-set and modifier pricing. Options that add a fixed amount or a percentage (gift wrap, engraving, a premium finish) have no direct equivalent on Shopify outside variants. Each one needs a decision: variant, add-on product or line item property.
• Customer passwords. No tool can move password hashes into Shopify; Shopify’s own help center says passwords cannot be migrated. Customers either set a new password from an account invite, or sign in with Shopify’s customer accounts, which use a one-time email code and need no password.
• Marketing consent. Email and SMS consent, and when it was given, should come from the source’s subscriber records. A blanket yes or no on import is a compliance problem either way.
• Redirects from the real URL inventory. Tools build redirects from the slugs in the database. The URLs Google has indexed often include older formats, query-string URLs and pages that no longer exist in the catalog, so the map should start from Search Console, analytics and a crawl.
• Reviews. Reviews usually belong in a review app such as Judge.me, with the product match, date, rating and reviewer checked.
• Theme and design. Design never migrates from any platform. The storefront is always rebuilt on a Shopify theme.
• Reconciliation proof. A progress bar that reaches 100 percent is not proof. You want counts from the source matched to live Shopify counts, with every exclusion named.

Using a tool and a managed migration together

Most of our projects are not tool or agency; they are both. A typical split looks like this:

1. Audit. We export the source data, count everything, and find the parts a tool will not get right: shipments, refunds, option pricing, B2B pricing and the URL inventory.
2. Build in a free Shopify development store. As a Shopify Plus Partner we build in development stores, so you pay Shopify nothing until launch.
3. Tool for the straightforward bulk. Where it fits, we run Cart2Cart for products and customers and check the result against the source.
4. Our own work for the rest. We import orders ourselves with the right transactions, refunds and fulfillments, redesign options that carry prices, build the redirect map from the real URL inventory, and move reviews.
5. Sample, sign-off, full run. You review a sample of each entity, including refunded and split-shipment orders, before the full import.
6. Cutover and delta sync. DNS moves to Shopify and a final sync brings across orders and customers created since the full run.
7. Post-launch SEO evaluation. Once Google has re-crawled the store and the first real analytics are in, we review coverage, 404s and rankings, and fix what we find.

Cart2Cart vs LitExtension for WooCommerce to Shopify

WooCommerce is the source people search for most with both tools, and the two are closely matched for it. Both offer a free demo, both price by the volume of data, and both carry variable products, customers, orders, coupons, pages and posts. Both offer preserving order IDs, 301 redirects and migrating embedded images as options. Cart2Cart connects through the WooCommerce API or its own Bridge file uploaded to the server; LitExtension offers automatic setup with credentials or a connector file you install. LitExtension publishes a money-back guarantee and includes Recent Migration, Smart Update and two re-migrations; Cart2Cart offers Recent Data Migration and sells remigrations through its packages and Migration Insurance.

The practical difference is usually in your data rather than the tool: how many attributes each product uses, whether plugins stored extra data in custom fields, and how complex the order history is. Run the demo on both with your own awkward products and orders, and compare the results line by line. For the WooCommerce-specific issues, see our WooCommerce to Shopify migration guide.

Cost and timeline

A tool on its own costs anything from nothing (Store Migration) to several hundred dollars or more for a large store, depending on the volume and options, plus your time to check and fix the result. A managed migration with us starts from $2,500 for stores under 500 products and 5,000 orders ($3,500 for larger stores), and typically takes six to eight weeks for smaller stores. B2B, multi-store and integrations such as ERP or accounting are quoted as a fixed price after the audit. Terms are 50% to begin and 50% once the store is live and you are fully satisfied with the figures. Where a tool can do part of the work well, we use it and the saving is reflected in the scope.

Questions to ask before you choose

• How many years of order history do you need, and will customer service or accounting rely on it?
• Were orders shipped in more than one box, and do customers look up tracking in their account?
• How many orders were refunded or partly refunded, and does the store use store credit or gift cards?
• Do any options add to the price, and do trade customers have their own prices?
• How much of your revenue comes from organic search, and which URLs rank today?
• Who will check the demo and the full run, and how much time can they give it?
• What would a day of wrong orders or broken links cost the business?

Frequently asked questions

Start with the migration survey and we will tell you which parts a tool can handle for your store. For platform detail, see the WooCommerce to Shopify guide and the full list of platforms we migrate from.