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A store migration is rarely decided in cold blood. A growing app bill, a commercial rule the platform cannot follow, an ERP integration project that keeps hitting its limits: one day, the question “should we leave Shopify?” lands on the table. It deserves to be asked calmly, because a poorly prepared migration can cost months of traffic.
This guide covers both halves of the question: when leaving makes sense, and how to do it without losing the rankings you have built. It is part of our ecommerce articles and follows on from Shopify or Medusa: which to choose for an SME?, which reminds us that migration is never a goal in itself.
In short
You leave Shopify for a fundamental reason (commercial rules, integrations, three-year cost), not for an annoyance a redesign would fix.
Rankings are protected before the switch: inventory of every useful URL, a 301 redirect for each, content carried over unchanged.
Shopify imposes its URL paths: keeping them on the new platform limits the number of redirects.
Customer accounts, reviews and merchant feeds each need their own plan.
The following weeks are monitored daily: 404 errors, indexed pages, sales.
Good and bad reasons to leave
Fundamental reasons
Commercial rules the platform cannot follow (negotiated prices, approvals, trade-specific logic)
An ERP or CRM integration that needs too many workarounds
A total three-year cost, apps and fees included, now higher than the alternative
Reasons that are not enough
One problematic app: it can be replaced or removed
An ageing theme: a redesign is enough
A slow store: measure the cause before blaming the platform
The cost of apps is calculated with the method in our article on the cost of Shopify apps, transaction fees with our comparison of payment fees, and slowness with what a second costs in sales. The B2B needs that often push companies to leave are detailed in our guide to the B2B store: first check what Shopify already offers.
What Shopify imposes on your URLs
Shopify files each type of content under a fixed path: products under /products/, collections under /collections/, pages under /pages/, articles under /blogs/. Its help on URL redirects also states that these fixed paths cannot be redirected from the store admin.
For the migration, this is good news: an open source platform or a custom site can reproduce exactly the same paths. Every URL kept identical is one redirect fewer, and one risk fewer. Change URLs only if you have a reason to, for example product names to correct, and then once and for all.
The inventory before the switch
- List the URLs.
Every page of the store, from a full crawl of the site and from the pages receiving clicks in Search Console over the past twelve months. Pages that bring traffic go first.
- Export the data.
Products, variants and images, customers, orders, blog articles, and the redirects already in place, which Shopify lets you export as a CSV file.
- Spot what does not carry over.
Customer account passwords cannot be transferred, as a competing platform’s migration guide points out: plan an invitation to set up access again. Reviews, custom fields and data held by apps each need their own export.
- Carry the content over unchanged.
Titles, descriptions, product texts, attributes, image alt texts: the switch is not the moment to rewrite.
If a catalogue overhaul is planned, do it before or after the migration, never during. Methods for rewriting product pages at scale are in our article on a catalogue of thousands of products.
The redirect plan
Every URL that changes gets a permanent (301) redirect to its exact equivalent: the same product, the same collection, the same article. A mass redirect to the home page loses most of the signals the pages had built up. Google recommends server-side permanent redirects, kept as long as possible, generally at least a year.
From the field
Checking redirects with the right tool
On an online plush toy store we are putting back on its feet, a first check counted 516 temporary redirects that were actually permanent: the platform did not respond the same way depending on the program querying it. On the same store, one rule has held since: set up the redirect before removing the page, never after; 172 unpublications were done that way.
The full list, how to build it and how to test it are detailed in our article on 301 redirects for a site migration, and sorting pages to keep, merge or delete in our article on website redesigns.
What Google sees during the switch
Even done well, a migration moves rankings for a while. Google states that, for a medium-sized site, it can take a few weeks before the new URLs show in results, with visibility fluctuating in the meantime. To keep that period short:
- Keep content and structure: same titles, same texts, same linking between collections and products.
- Carry over the structured data of product pages (price, availability, reviews), without which rich results disappear.
- Submit the new sitemap in Search Console on the day of the switch.
- Check language versions if the store is multilingual: each language keeps its URL and its hreflang tags, following our guide to the multilingual, multi-currency store and our article on hreflang mistakes.
Switch day and the weeks that follow
Choose a quiet period, away from sales and holidays. On the day, freeze the catalogue, bring over the orders placed since the last export, switch the domain, then test a complete purchase. After that, every day for the first weeks:
- 404 errors reported by Search Console and the server logs, fixed with a redirect or a page.
- Merchant feeds: the product feed for Google Merchant Center and the marketplaces must point to the new URLs, otherwise the ads send people to pages that no longer exist. See our guide to preparing your store for Google Shopping and what makes a Google Shopping campaign rise or sink.
- Automated emails: welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, to rebuild and test on the new platform, with our guide to store emails and the one on abandoned cart reminders.
- The weekly figures: traffic, conversion, average order, compared with the same period, following the five numbers to track every week.
Functions that lived in apps are checked one by one: customer reviews (collect them, show them, use them for SEO), site search (when customers can’t find it), inventory sync (across your store, marketplaces and shop), returns handling (a hidden cost to manage). If you also sell on Amazon, check that references stay aligned, following our article on Amazon alongside your own store. And the new product page must keep what made the old one sell: see the product page that converts.
One last, often forgotten point: the robots.txt file and the firewall of the new platform also decide what search engine and AI assistant crawlers see. An overly strict default setting can block those you want to welcome, as our article on websites closing the door on AI agents explains.
Where to start
Before any decision, write down the fundamental reason pushing you to leave and cost the current setup over three years. If the migration is confirmed, start with the inventory of URLs that receive traffic: it will tell you the size of the redirect plan. Our ecommerce service carries out this assessment and will also tell you, where relevant, that staying is the better choice.
Frequently asked questions
Do you lose your SEO when leaving Shopify?
Not if the migration is prepared: every URL that receives traffic is redirected with a 301 to its equivalent, content is carried over unchanged and structured data kept. A temporary dip is still possible for a few weeks, while Google processes the new URLs. Lasting losses almost always come from forgotten redirects or redirects sent to the home page.
Can you keep the same URLs as before?
Often, yes. Shopify imposes its paths (/products/, /collections/, /pages/), but an open source platform or a custom site can reproduce them exactly. It is the safest option: each URL kept is one redirect fewer to create and test. Change URLs only for a good reason, and only once.
Do customers have to recreate their account?
Their customer record carries over (name, addresses, order history depending on the tool), but passwords do not, since they are stored encrypted. Plan an email that explains the change and invites customers to set a new password, and make the “forgot password” path clearly visible during the first weeks.
How long should you keep the redirects?
As long as possible. Google recommends at least a year, and nothing stops you keeping them indefinitely: external links and bookmarks will keep pointing to the old URLs for years. A redirect removed too early turns those visits into 404 errors.
Sources
- Shopify Help, URL redirects (new tab)help.shopify.com
- ShopWired, migrating customers from Shopify (new tab)help.shopwired.co.uk
- Google Search Central, site moves with URL changes (new tab)developers.google.com
Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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