Shopify → to Shopify

Shopify to Shopify migration: merging stores, moving to a new store, or upgrading to Plus

Moving from Shopify to Shopify sounds like it should be a button. It is not. Shopify has no native way to merge two stores, copy a store, or transfer order history, and the pieces that seem simplest, the theme, gift cards and customer accounts, are the ones with rules attached. This guide covers the three situations we see, what actually moves, and the traps.

The three reasons this comes up

Situation	Typical trigger	What it involves
Consolidating several stores into one	Separate stores per country, brand or acquisition, now wanted under one admin with Shopify Markets	Merging catalogs, deduplicating customers across stores, importing every store’s orders, redirecting every old domain and path.
Moving to a fresh store	An acquisition, a store that has accumulated years of app residue and broken settings, a change of ownership or region	A clean rebuild with the data carried over and the old store retired.
Upgrading to Shopify Plus	Checkout customization, B2B, Launchpad, higher API limits	Usually an in-place plan change, not a migration. Scripts to Functions and checkout rebuilds are the real work. See our Shopify Plus migration page.

What moves between Shopify stores, and how

Data	Moves?	Notes
Products, variants, images, metafields, collections	Yes	Matrixify or the Admin API carries everything including metafields, which Shopify’s own CSV export does not.
Customers with addresses, tags, consent, metafields	Yes	When consolidating, the same customer often exists in several stores. We merge on email and keep the richest record.
Customer passwords	No	Shopify does not export password hashes even between Shopify stores. Passwordless customer accounts remove the issue.
Orders with line items, transactions, refunds, fulfillments and tracking	Yes	Imported as real orders. Order numbers can be preserved or offset so two stores’ histories do not collide.
Draft orders, abandoned checkouts	Drafts yes, abandoned checkouts no
Discount codes	Yes	Exported and recreated with usage counts reset.
Gift cards	Balances yes, codes conditionally	Gift cards can be created with a specified code by API on Shopify Plus. On other plans new codes are issued and customers are notified.
Theme	Depends	A custom or free theme is downloaded and uploaded. A paid Theme Store theme is licensed per store and must be bought again for the new store.
Apps and their data	No	Every app is reinstalled. App-held data (reviews, subscriptions, loyalty points) is exported from each app and imported to its new install. Subscriptions in particular need the app vendor’s migration process.
Redirects	Yes	Existing redirects export and import, and new ones are added for every old path.
Domain	Yes	Removed from the old store and connected to the new one at cutover. Same domain means no SEO loss when paths are preserved.
Markets, shipping profiles, tax settings, locations, staff, payment settings	No	Configuration is rebuilt by hand. Shopify Payments needs a fresh application on the new store, which takes a few days and should start early.
Analytics and reports history	No	Old store reports stay in the old store. Keep it on a minimal plan or export the reports you need.

The traps

• Shopify Payments approval. Apply on the new store in week one. Payouts to the old store continue until it closes.
• Order numbers. Two stores both starting at #1001 collide. We offset one range and store the original number on each order.
• Shop Pay and the Shop app. Imported historical orders can surface to customers through the Shop app. We disable the Shop channel during the order import and re-enable it at launch.
• Subscriptions. Active subscriptions cannot simply be re-imported; the subscription app has to move the contracts and the payment methods. This is scoped with the app vendor before anything else.
• Metafield definitions and app-reserved namespaces. Definitions are recreated before the product import or the values land as unstructured.
• The Theme Store license. Budget for buying the theme again if it is a paid one.

How we run it

1. Audit of every store: apps, metafields, markets, subscriptions, gift cards, order counts, domains. Fixed-price scope.
2. Build the target store in a development store or the new Plus store: configuration, theme, metafield definitions, apps installed, Shopify Payments applied for.
3. Sample import and sign-off.
4. Full data run of products, customers, orders, fulfillments, discounts and gift cards, with the Shop channel disabled.
5. App data migrations with each vendor.
6. Redirects from every old path and, for consolidations, every old domain.
7. Cutover with a delta sync and the domain moved. Old stores set to password-protected, kept for reports, then closed.
8. Audit report reconciling every entity across every source store.

Timeline and cost

A single-store move is usually four to eight weeks. Consolidating several stores runs eight to fourteen depending on how many and how much overlap there is in customers and catalog. Projects start at $2,500 for a single-store move with a modest catalog and $3,500 for larger single-store moves, and are quoted as a fixed price after the audit. Payment is 50 percent to begin and 50 percent once the store is live and you are fully satisfied with the figures.

A consolidation, worked through

A typical case is a brand with three stores, one each for the US, the UK and the EU, set up years ago before Markets existed. They want one admin, one catalog and one customer view. The plan looks like this.

• Target store. Usually the US store, because it has the most history, the domain and the Shopify Payments account. The other two are sources.
• Markets. UK and EU markets configured with their currencies, domains (which move from the old stores), tax settings, shipping profiles and any price differences carried over from the source stores’ price lists.
• Catalog merge. Products are matched across stores on SKU. Where the same product exists three times with slightly different copy or images, the richest version wins and the others are mapped to it. Market-specific descriptions become translations.
• Customer merge. Customers are matched on email. A customer who exists in two stores keeps the earliest created date, the union of addresses and tags, and consent if any store recorded it. Every source record keeps its original store and ID in metafields.
• Orders. UK orders get numbers prefixed or offset so they never collide with US numbers, and every order carries a metafield naming the source store. Reports can then be filtered by origin.
• Apps. Reviews, loyalty and subscriptions are exported per store and imported once, with subscription contracts moved by the vendor.
• Redirects. Every UK and EU product and collection URL redirects to the same handle on the target store, with the market domain preserved so the customer lands on the right currency.

Cutover day sequence

1. Freeze changes on the source stores. Product and collection edits stop the day before.
2. Run the delta import of orders and customers created since the full run.
3. Set the source stores to password-protected so nobody buys on them.
4. Move the domains to the target store and assign them to their Markets.
5. Re-enable the Shop channel, which was off during the order import.
6. Test a checkout in each market with a real card and refund it.
7. Submit the sitemap in Search Console for the domain property.
8. Keep the source stores on the lowest plan for ninety days for reports, then close them.

What stays in the old stores

Analytics and reports do not transfer, so anything you will want later, such as year-on-year sales by product, is exported before the stores close. Shopify Payments payouts and disputes stay with the old store and its bank account, and a dispute can arrive months after a sale, so keep access. Gift card codes issued by the old store stop working once it closes unless they were recreated with the same codes on Plus, which is why we export the full gift card list with balances before anything else.

Common mistakes in Shopify to Shopify moves

• Applying for Shopify Payments on launch week and waiting on approval with the domain already moved.
• Importing customers before the metafield definitions exist, so consent and tags land but structured data does not.
• Letting order numbers collide across stores, which makes support tickets unanswerable.
• Leaving the Shop channel on during the historical order import.
• Closing the old store before the last dispute window has passed.

Settings that have to be rebuilt by hand

Because Shopify has no store copy function, every setting outside products, customers and orders is recreated. The list is longer than most people expect, and it is the reason a small-catalog move still takes a month.

Area	What is rebuilt
Payments	Shopify Payments application, payout account, alternative gateways, manual payment methods, fraud settings
Checkout	Customer account mode, checkout customizations and branding, tipping, order processing rules, marketing consent options
Shipping	Locations, shipping profiles, zones and rates, local delivery and pickup, carrier accounts, packaging
Taxes and duties	Registrations, overrides, duties settings per market
Markets	Regions, currencies, domains, languages, price adjustments
Notifications	Every customized email and SMS template, sender address and domain authentication
Staff and permissions	Users, roles, POS staff, collaborator access
Metafield and metaobject definitions	Every definition, before the data import
Navigation and theme settings	Menus, theme settings, section content that lives in the theme rather than the products
Policies and legal pages	Refund, privacy, terms and shipping policies
Sales channels	Shop, Google and YouTube, Meta, marketplaces, each reconnected and re-verified

When a fresh store is the right call

Most stores should stay where they are and fix what is wrong in place. A fresh store makes sense when the store is changing hands and the old owner’s payment and tax history should not come with it, when an acquisition needs a clean entity, when years of app installs have left settings, metafields and theme code nobody understands, or when the store was set up in the wrong region and the Shopify Payments account cannot be moved. If the goal is only a new theme or a plan change, neither needs a migration.

What you get at handover

A reconciliation ledger for every entity across every source store, showing how duplicates were merged and where each record came from; the order number mapping; the gift card and discount code transfer log; the app data migration confirmations from each vendor; the redirect verification list per old domain; and a settings checklist ticked off item by item. For consolidations, the ledger is the document that answers the inevitable question three months later about where a particular customer or order came from.

Questions we settle in the survey

• How many stores, which one is the target, and where the domain and Shopify Payments account live.
• Whether any store runs subscriptions, and on which app.
• How order numbers should be handled where they overlap.
• Which paid theme, if any, needs to be relicensed.
• Whether the old stores stay open for reports and for how long.

Frequently asked questions

Tell us how many stores are involved on the migration survey. If the goal is Plus, start with the Shopify Plus migration page and the Advanced to Plus guide.