Is a migration from BigCommerce to Shopify worth the cost?
If you’re considering moving your ecommerce store from BigCommerce to Shopify, the decision may hinge on this question. Most agencies won’t be clear or transparent about costs until you’re trapped in a sales call cycle, so here’s a breakdown of what this move means for your business.
BigCommerce to Shopify migration costs anywhere from hours of your own time to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on your store’s complexity and whether you decide to DIY vs get an agency involved. The range that fits your store depends on three things: how complex your catalog is, how much custom work you need, and whether you want the new site to convert and perform better than the old one.
Most BigCommerce migrations for $5M to $50M DTC brands land in the $20,000 to $50,000 range. But you can do a quick migration to Shopify for about $7,000, with your data intact.
Why the BigCommerce to Shopify migration cost range is so wide
The cost of a Shopify migration varies depending on complexities, customization, and compliance regulations.
Complexity
A clean 20-SKU catalog migration is simple. When you have a 10,000-SKU catalog with custom fields, variant logic, and metafield mapping, migrating can start to feel overwhelming. The volume of data isn't the issue, but the volume of decisions about that data involves time and platform understanding.
This was a concern for All Industrial, who came to us for help managing 750,000 SKUs.
Catalogs aren’t the only complexity in your business, either. B2B, DTC, various marketplaces, international sales, in-person sales, and complex workflows are typical for ecommerce stores, and will need to be accounted for in your migration math.
Integrations
Every connected app or service has to be audited, replaced, rebuilt or updated, and tested. Five apps may feel like a manageable DIY project, but twenty-five connected apps can start to feel overwhelming if you're trying to migrate your store by yourself.
Shopify offers over 20,000 apps (and growing) to help you operate your ecommerce store. Many are powerful tools that can make it easier to operate and grow your business, and migration can be an optimal time to integrate the right apps for your store.
Ask us which Shopify apps are right for you.
Scope beyond data movement
A pure data migration (move the products, set up the theme, point the DNS) is the least expensive way to make the move. Again, you can do a clean data migration for around $7,000 and make sure your data is moved and your CRO is preserved.
However, if you want to address outdated branding or use the opportunity to make CRO improvements that make it easier to buy and easier to sell online, that number goes up. If the project scope includes brand strategy, CRO, content rewriting, B2B configuration, custom themes, compliance, marketplaces, and B2B/B2C complexities, the cost will start around $25,000.
The good news is this: we’ve been supporting ecommerce stores and have helped 200+ clients and we have never seen a project so complex that it needed hundreds of thousands of dollars to solve.
Cost by approach
DIY: $0 plus your time
Manual CSV migration is the cheapest path on paper. You export your BigCommerce data, format it for Shopify's import templates, upload it, then rebuild your theme from scratch and configure everything from payments to shipping to integrations.
- What it costs in reality: 80 to 200+ hours of someone's time, depending on catalog complexity. As a busy store owner who is likely wearing many hats, taking that amount of time to DIY a migration doesn’t always pencil out.
- Who it fits: stores under 100 SKUs, no custom integrations, no B2B, no meaningful SEO traffic, and a team that's comfortable with Shopify's features and admin interface.
- Where it could go wrong: SEO redirects (most DIY migrations skip the full 301 map and lose 20% to 40% of organic traffic), conversion drops at launch, customer password handling, abandoned cart flow rebuild, and missed metafield mapping that breaks product pages after launch.
Migration tool: $200 to $3,500+
Migration tools and apps can automate data transfer. You point them at your BigCommerce store, configure what gets moved, and they do the heavy lifting on products, customers, orders, and content.
Cost range: $200 for a small catalog, $1,000 to $3,500 for mid-size catalogs with more data types, and into five figures for very large migrations with custom data mapping.
- What's included: data transfer. What's not: theme rebuild, SEO redirects (most tools handle partial redirects but skip the full audit), CRO work, brand strategy, integration rebuild, or anything strategic.
- Who it fits: brands with clean data, standard catalog structures, no custom fields to worry about, and a team that can manage everything around the tool.
- Where it could go wrong: a tool moves data efficiently. Strategy is still your job. You still need someone to make the calls on what gets migrated, what gets retired, how the new site is structured, and how the brand evolves. If something goes wrong, troubleshooting goes to app support teams. Involves a time commitment and willingness to be hands-on through the process.
Boutique agency, data migration only: $5,000 to $15,000
Not every business wants to invest in a full rebrand and growth strategy at the same time as a migration project.
That’s why we offer a migration service that handles the data move, sets up a clean Shopify instance, configures payments and shipping, and implements a CRO foundation so you can migrate now and work on growth later.
- What’s included: Whirlwind's CLEAN MOVE tier, which starts at $7,000, migrates your data and launches in 5 weeks. We’re not the only ecommerce agency to offer a lower price point “migration only” service; many agencies will help you make the move. Not every agency infuses CRO foundational work at this price point, however, and you likely won’t get a high-touch boutique experience with competitors at this price range.
- Who it fits: brands with a 1-to-2-person team, an existing brand they're happy with, and a desire to move fast without the full strategic engagement.
- Where it could go wrong: if the source site has underlying conversion problems, those problems come along for the ride. A clean migration of a poorly-converting site produces a poorly-converting Shopify site.
Full-service agency: $20,000 to $75,000
This is where most mid-market DTC brands land. The engagement includes data migration, theme rebuild, CRO discovery and implementation, brand and content strategy, integration audit and rebuild, custom solutions for your specific business needs, and post-launch support.
Whirlwind's Full Service tier starts at $25,000. Other boutique Shopify agencies tend to start around $20,000 to $30,000; mid-tier agencies often start at $40,000 to $60,000.
- What’s included: At this tier, you're paying for both the migration and a better-converting site at the end of it. Whirlwind's average client conversion rate uplift post-migration is 83.2%, which means the cost of the engagement pays back quickly for brands doing meaningful revenue.
- Who it fits: $5M to $50M DTC brands that want the migration to actually improve the business, not just port it to a new platform.
- Where it could go wrong: With this level of customization, scope creep can push back estimated launch dates. As you start to see how Shopify can help reduce friction in your business, it’s natural for the project scope to change. We recommend launching with the original project goals, but logging scope changes for a phased or ongoing approach.
Enterprise / Shopify Plus custom: $75,000 to $300,000+
Custom international or multichannel migrations, complex B2B setups, headless commerce builds, or migrations involving heavy custom development land here. Whirlwind's custom range is $75,000 to $150,000; competing enterprise-focused agencies tend to start at $100,000 and can run past $300,000.
- Who it fits: $50M+ brands, brands with complex international or multi-storefront requirements, brands building on Shopify Plus with custom middleware.
- What you're paying for: senior strategists, custom development capacity, project management overhead, and risk reduction at scale. At enterprise scale, a botched migration costs more in lost revenue than the agency fee, so the premium for a team with track record is rational.
- Where it could go wrong: Similar to full service work, going beyond a project’s initial scope could push back launch timelines.
Hidden costs people miss
Beyond the sticker price, brands often forget to budget for these:
App and subscription costs after migration. Some categories of Shopify apps cost more than the BigCommerce equivalents. Build a side-by-side cost comparison of your current app stack vs. the Shopify equivalents before signing the contract.
Theme purchase or customization. Free Shopify themes are decent but limited. A premium theme costs $200 to $400. Significant customization on top of a premium theme can add to the project price, depending on scope.
Internal team time. Your team will invest time on a migration project (decision-making, content review, QA, training), even when an agency is leading. Expect weekly cadence calls, to review documents and designs, and to prepare product catalogs. You, or a dedicated point of contact, may spend a few hours each week engaging as part of the process.
Re-training and process change. Your team has to learn the new admin. Plan for 2 to 4 weeks of slower throughput post-launch as the team adapts.
SEO recovery if redirects are botched. A botched 301 map can negatively impact organic traffic for 3 to 6 months. This is the single biggest hidden cost in cheap migrations.
Re-doing brand work later. Migrating an outdated brand to a new platform locks in the conversion problems of the old brand. Brands that skip the brand refresh during migration often pay for it within 12 months when they realize the new site isn't outperforming the old one.
The ROI on a BigCommerce to Shopify migration
What’s the cost of not moving from BigCommerce to Shopify?
A simplified example:
- Take a $15M brand at 2% conversion rate, migrating with a full-service agency engagement of $50,000.
- If the migration produces a 25% lift in conversion rate, the conversion rate goes from 2% to 2.5%.
- At the same traffic volume, that's an additional $3.75M in annual revenue. The $50,000 migration cost pays back in the first month. The remaining lift is profit margin against operating cost.
For any brand doing $3M+ in annual revenue, the payback on a full-service migration that meaningfully improves conversion is faster than almost any other marketing investment. CRO is just one way to calculate the ROI of a migration.
Which option fits your store
A rough sizing rule based on what we see most often:
- Under $1M annual revenue: DIY or migration tool. Agency cost is hard to justify against the revenue base.
- $1M to $5M: Migration tool with optional agency support, or a migration-only engagement ($7K to $15K) if you want the work handled by an experienced team.
- $5M to $20M: Full-service agency engagement ($20K to $50K). The conversion math works easily at this revenue level.
- $20M to $50M: Full-service or custom ($30K to $100K+). At this scale, the cost of a botched migration is the real risk to manage.
Use these as starting points. The specifics of your store will move the number up or down. A $3M alcohol DTC brand with complex compliance needs may warrant a full-service engagement that wouldn't make sense for a $3M apparel brand with a simple catalog. A $20M brand with a strong existing site and brand may only need a migration-only service.
Getting an actual cost estimate for YOUR migration
Pricing a BigCommerce migration accurately means scoping it against the needs of your specific ecommerce store.
See our BigCommerce to Shopify migration services for the full breakdown of what's included at each tier, and then schedule a 30-minute consultation for a custom quote based on your store, catalog, complexities, and compliance requirements.