I build the new store next to the one that is running, so you keep selling throughout. And I tell you straight what transfers, what transfers with caveats and what nobody can move – including me.
A written reply within 24 hours · no commitment
When the current platform is holding back your growth – a design that cannot be moved, features that cannot be finished, an expansion that does not fit into one admin. A migration is an investment in higher profit, not in a nicer look. If you do not expect more sales out of the move, stay where you are; I will say so in my reply to your enquiry.
I migrate only to Shopify and only in one direction. I do not shuffle stores back and forth depending on who is paying commission this month.
This is where migrations most often go wrong – not technically, but in expectations. So I put it in writing before we agree anything.
I name the caveats and exceptions upfront, so none of it is a surprise at the last minute.
For every phase you know what I do and what I need from you. Dates are in the offer, not improvised along the way.
An inventory of data, URLs and integrations. Out of it comes the 301 redirect map and a schedule planned so that launch does not land in your season. From you I need access and a decision on what to carry over and what to leave behind.
Design and development on a new Shopify account while the old one keeps selling. You see the work in progress from the start and approve the key pages (homepage, product, cart) as they land.
Import of products, customers and orders, in batches for larger catalogues. Shipping, payments, invoicing and marketplace feeds are connected now – not after launch.
The domain is switched and the redirects go live. Prepared, tested and scheduled for the quietest hour of your week.
I watch indexing, rankings, error URLs and conversion. Tuning the small things is included – this is not a phase you pay for separately.
Before you hire anyone, it is worth knowing how much of a migration you could do yourself. With some platforms quite a lot, with others almost none. And note: all of these move data only – none of them builds the design, the shipping or the integrations for you.
Export a file, tidy it in a spreadsheet, import it. Free and entirely in your hands – but it moves products and little else, and it will not build you a redirect map.
Makes sense up to a few hundred products with no SEO history.
An app that handles bulk import and export far better than the built-in tools, including orders and metafields. Still a tool, not a service: someone has to prepare and map the data.
A great helper, not a migration service.
They connect to both platforms and move the data for you. They work well for the mainstream ones and badly for regional boxes, and the URL map is not something they can produce.
At best a first step for a European box platform.
What I do. Data comes out through exports and APIs, gets cleaned, mapped and loaded in batches – including orders, content and the redirect map, which no off-the-shelf tool can assemble. For a store with history this is not a luxury; it is the only route that works.
The only route when a store has history and rankings.
There is no sense paying for a migration of a store that could be moved in an afternoon. If your enquiry tells me a CSV import would do, I will say so.
The most common worry is “will the store be down?”. It will not. Here is why.
I freeze changes on the old store apart from orders and stock. The new store is finished and tested, the redirect map uploaded and checked.
A final data sync – orders and customers that arrived during the build. A test run through the whole checkout on live payments.
DNS is switched and the redirects go live. At that moment a visitor sees either the old store or the new one – never an error. Real unavailability is measured in minutes.
I watch error URLs, indexing and the conversion rate. Anything that shows up gets fixed the same day.
You do not lose orders placed on switchover day. The old system stays accessible until I have pulled even its final day of trading.
Tell me what you are migrating from and what you sell. Within 24 hours you will have what the move involves in writing, with an indicative price.
Nobody can guarantee that not a single position moves. Google itself writes that visibility fluctuates temporarily during a move. What can be influenced is how much and for how long.
Google states it in the documentation: permanent 301 redirects do not cause a loss of PageRank. Drops are not caused by redirects but by their absence – the URL somebody forgot.
According to Google, for a small to medium site most pages move across in the index within a few weeks; for large sites longer. Google has never quoted a figure like “three months” – anyone citing it is making it up.
Google advises changing things gradually. Moving platform and changing URLs happen at one moment – that is unavoidable in a migration. So I add nothing on top: URLs are mapped one to one, content and meta data are carried across, and larger SEO work waits until the store has settled. The fewer things change at once, the faster the index recovers.
Google recommends keeping redirects alive for at least a year, so that links on other people’s sites have time to be updated. That is a year after launch, not up to it.
And straight: nobody will guarantee that positions do not move at all – fluctuations after a migration happen and Google treats them as normal. What is in my control: a clean URL map, meta data carried across, and daily checks on the numbers for the first 30 days. If something moves the wrong way, I deal with it immediately, not in a month.
Roughly: a smaller migration with no design work lands in the low thousands of euros, a move with a new design and integrations in the low tens of thousands. I will name a firm number once I know what I am moving – never first on the invoice.
Shopify itself starts around €25 a month on Basic (about a quarter less paid annually). On top of that the apps a European store needs – parcel lockers, marketplace feeds, invoicing – in the tens of euros. Realistically budget a low hundreds of euros a month depending on the mix.
An indicative estimate in writing within 24 hours · no commitment
So the offer still holds after signing. I can do these things – they are just agreed separately, not refused.
Copy is carried across as it is. If you want it rewritten or optimised, I will do it – as a separate line item, so you know what you are paying for.
Existing photos are moved and optimised. Shooting and retouching are not part of a migration.
I will reconnect the tracking and the feeds. Restructuring campaigns is marketing work and is quoted on its own.
Nobody can promise that, and anyone who does is selling you something. What I do guarantee is a clean URL map and daily checks for the first 30 days.
A migration that does not pay back hurts both sides. These are the situations where I will tell you to stay.
I say this in the written reply to your enquiry, not after you have paid for an analysis.
Each one differs in how the data comes out and what the URLs look like. Tell me which one you are on.
The one platform here that Shopify can handle with its own import tool. Getting data out is easy – the work is in the plugins and in WordPress permalinks.
Migrating from WooCommerceCommon across the DACH region. Data comes out through the API, but the URL structure and the plugin layer differ heavily between versions 5 and 6.
Migrating from ShopwareSelf-hosted, so the migration runs from the database. Usually the largest catalogues and the most complex URL maps of anything I move.
Migrating from MagentoSelf-hosted as well, so data comes straight from the database. URLs ending in .html and their combinations make the most laborious redirect map of the lot.
Migrating from PrestaShopNot seeing your platform? I have migrated from bespoke systems too – tell me what you are running on.
No URL disappears into nothing. Every old address gets a permanent (301) redirect to the matching new one, so external links and the SEO signals you have collected point at Shopify rather than at a 404.
Old address
/old-url
301 (permanent)
redirect
New on Shopify
/products/…
Both the visitor and Googlebot land on the right new page – not on a 404.
Real stores from my desk – some built from zero, some heavily rebuilt. Proof that Shopify holds up under demanding traffic.
Continental Lab
Töpfer Babywelt
Aniball
Roughly: a smaller migration with no design work lands in the low thousands of euros, a move with a new design and integrations in the low tens of thousands. The price is driven by the volume and cleanliness of the data, the number of URLs to redirect and the number of integrations. Send me a few sentences about what you run on and how many products you have, and within 24 hours you will have an indicative estimate in writing.
Get an indicative priceTypically 2 to 8 weeks from brief to launch. The shorter end applies to a smaller catalogue with no design work, the longer to a bigger store with several languages and warehouse or ERP connections. You get a schedule with milestones in the offer – planned so launch does not land in the middle of your season.
No. I build the new store in parallel with the running one, so the old one keeps selling throughout. On launch day the domain is switched and redirects go live; real unavailability is measured in minutes, not days. I schedule the switch for the quietest hour of your week.
Not if the redirects are done properly. Google states that permanent 301 redirects do not cause a loss of PageRank – drops come from URLs that were forgotten, not from redirecting. Expect temporary fluctuation while the index catches up, usually a few weeks. I keep the redirects live for a year and watch the numbers daily for the first 30 days.
They cannot be moved – they are hashed and no platform hands them over. On Shopify that turns out not to matter: customers sign in with a one-time code sent by email, so nobody has to invent a new password. In practice it removes friction rather than adding it.
Yes. Orders, customers and addresses transfer, including history. For larger catalogues it runs in batches, and the final day of trading on the old platform is pulled across before it is switched off.
Partly, and I will tell you when that is the sensible answer. If you have a few hundred products and no SEO history to protect, a CSV import may genuinely be enough. What you cannot do yourself is the redirect map – and that is the part that decides whether the migration costs you traffic.
In your season. For most stores that means November and December. A migration wants a quiet period where a week of settling in costs you nothing, and it wants your attention for feedback – neither of which you have during peak.
A few lines about your platform, roughly how many products you have and what is holding you back. Within 24 hours you will have what the move involves and an indicative price, in writing. No call, no commitment.
Would rather not fill anything in? Write straight to ahoj@hynekkraus.cz