BigCommerce to Shopify Migration: How Much Does It Cost?

I n online retail, your website interface and performance is a crucial factor in driving customers into making a purchase. Therefore, choosing a right e-commerce platform is of great significance to your business.

However, it is not easy to come up with an absolutely right solution for your store’s lifetime activity when you first started out. As your business grows, your website needs different features that you couldn’t predict in the first place to better serve your customers. This eventually leads you to a decision of changing your current website platform, which involves moving all the important information from your current cart to your target one.

Suppose you are trying to migrate data from your current BigCommerce store to your desirable Shopify cart. There are 3 ways to do this and the BigCommerce to Shopify migration cost differs in each way.

Now, let’s read our comparison research below to make your decision.

1. Manual BigCommerce to Shopify Migration

You absolutely can do a BigCommerce to Shopify migration yourself but it will take a few months or even more if you are not a technical specialist. You had better start making a plan as soon as possible.

Before you start, here are two things you need to prepare in advance: Firstly, review your existing data and decide what kinds of data you want to migrate (for example: products, products reviews, customers, historical orders, gift cards, etc). Secondly, look at two table below to find out what types of data you can export CSV files from BigCommerce and what types are supported by Shopify to be imported by CSV files format to the platform.

Data migration options by Shopify

Data migration options by BigCommerce

As you can see, products and customers are the only two data you can import by CSV files to Shopify. Consequently, for the unsupported data, the only solution to import them is to copy and paste content from your old site.

Now let’s us walk you through 4 steps to import products and customers to your Shopify store

1. Learn about the CSV file templates that you need to use to import your and to Shopify.
2. Go to your old BigCommerce store, create a custom export templates for products and customers based on Shopify template requirements.
3. Export products and customers to CSV files and download the files. See for detail instructions.
4. Import CSV files to your Shopify store. See here for detail instructions to import products file and customers file .

Note: The order in which you import your data is of great importance so that Shopify can display your data properly. So, here is the order you need to follow:

So, let’s have a quick cap about the first solution’s pros and cons

Pros:

High level of security: Due to the fact that you do it yourself, there is not a way your data can be leaked outside.

You are aware of the migration progress.

It saves you money.

Cons:

It takes a lot of time and effort: In addition to products and customers, you have to copy and paste other important data manually.

You are able to import products to Shopify by CSV file but unable to import product’s photos without uploading them manually.

High chance of unexpected errors as you are not an expert in shopping carts.

2. Hire a web agency or freelancer to finish the job for you.

Now that not only can doing it all by yourself be so frustrating and time-consuming but it also isn’t effective. You can hire a web agency or freelancer to import data to the new store for you. The cost fluctuates at around 40$ per hour.

Usually, the web agency or freelancer will migrate your data by exporting data in your old platform to Excel or CSV files and then importing them to your new shopping cart. However, rarely is there a web agency or freelancer who can understand 100% data structure of a platform, which results in number of errors relating to data and table structure. If this happens, it will take them more time to fix and the cost you have to pay will add up

Therefore, you must consult carefully when choosing a partner. They must be reliable and highly experienced in BigCommerce to Shopify migration. In today market, it’s very difficult to find someone who understand both of the platforms. Moreover, if they are dishonest, they can easily leak your business’ information to your components.

Next, let’s have a quick review what are the pros and cons of this solution:

Pros:

Save your time and effort.

They can migrate more types of data than you can yourself.

Cons:

Cost you a lot of money.

Your important data can be under threat if you choose a wrong partner.

You can’t control the migration progress.

3. Use LitExtension — The Automated Shopping Cart Migration Tool

LitExtension is one of the world’s leading companies in automated shopping cart migration tool for almost 8 years now. The tool helps you to migrate every type of data including your products, customers information, orders, tax, etc easily, securely and within only a few hours. Especially, your current store can still be active and available for customers during the migration.

LitExtension can get your BigCommerce to Shopify migration done with high level security as its tool is automatic. The tool needs your permission to access your database and will immediately disconnect from the source site after getting the only data you requested to migrate.

Moreover, it only takes you a few clicks to perform the migration. In general, here are 3 simple steps to migrate your data to your target store with LitExtension:

1. Input cart information
2. Select data to migrate
3. Perform migration

LitExtension is the optimal solution for your BigCommerce to Shopify migration at present. Following is the reasons:

• Best-in-class IT team and product: LitExtension was run by a group of IT experts who have more than 8 years of experience in Web-Development and eCommerce solutions. The tool has earned trust from more than 20,000 global customers and migrated more than 30,000 e-stores successfully.
• Affordable Price: LitExtension is one of a few companies which provides migration tool with a fairly low cost. They have an automated calculation which shows you the exact price you have to pay when you enter the number of entities you want to migrate. They also show you the estimated time the BigCommerce to Shopify migration may take. See their here. Moreover, they has Free Demo and Trial Migration which help you preview how the tool works and how your data is stored and managed in the new shopping cart.
• Professional Support: LitExtension has a dedicated and professional support team. They provide 24/5 support by ticket, phone, live chat, or email. Hence, all of your problem will be solved quickly and accurately
• High Security: LitExtension provides solution to perform the migration directly from your current store to your target cart, no third party involved.
• No Technical Skill required: With the tool, your BigCommerce to Shopify migration is just a few clicks away. You don’t need any advanced technical skills or knowledge to deal with the migration. Besides, you always have the support team around if there is any concern.

Originally published at https://blog.litextension.com on April 27, 2019.