For a store owner moving platforms: move the catalogue without trusting a bare import

Decide the scope before the file

A catalogue move is easy to describe and easy to underestimate. Decide what is moving: products and variants, or also customers, historical orders, reviews and pages. Products are the part a file can carry well; Shopify describes CSV and migration-app routes, and says customers and historical orders move by other routes. Write down which of the source platform's concepts must survive, such as options, categories and custom fields, so the mapping has rules to follow.

• Count your products and variants.
• List products with more than three options; Shopify allows three.
• Decide what you are leaving behind on purpose.

Prove the import on a test store

Shopify recommends exporting first and testing large imports on a development store. For a catalogue move that means building the files, importing on the test store, exporting again and comparing counts and a sample with the source before anything is imported to the real store. Image addresses must still be reachable while Shopify downloads them, so keep the old store online until every import has run.

• Keep the old store online until imports and checks are finished.
• Export the new store's products before each live import.

Plan old addresses and launch checks

Old product addresses need redirects set before the domain moves, and the most visited ones should be tested after launch. Place test orders for successful and failed payments before opening the store. No file can promise a search ranking result, and we do not promise one.

What stays your job

You run the live import, the redirect import and the domain change under your own account, and you decide how to merge or split products that need more than three options. We send files, steps and comparisons, and we never hold your store logins.