The guide
Migration day should be uneventful.
A complex Shopify migration succeeds or fails on the planning that happens before a single product is moved, not on the cutover itself.
Audit every data type before you plan the move
Products, customers, order history, subscriptions, loyalty points and vendor records each carry different migration rules. Map them individually before estimating timeline.
Decide what actually needs to migrate
Not every historical record needs to move live. Archiving old data separately reduces risk and keeps the new store lean from day one.
Rebuild integrations before, not during, cutover
Payment gateways, fulfilment, loyalty and marketing tools need to be tested against the new store well ahead of go-live, not wired up under time pressure.
Plan for subscription and recurring-revenue continuity
Active subscriptions need a migration path that doesn't interrupt billing or lapse customer access — this is usually the highest-risk data type in the whole move.
Rehearse the cutover with a dry run
A staged migration to a test environment surfaces the edge cases — special pricing, custom fields, redirects — that a plan alone won't catch.