How to Migrate from Magento to BigCommerce: Step-by-Step Plan

Migrating from Magento to BigCommerce is not a simple platform switch. It is a full replatforming project that affects your catalog, customer data, order history, SEO equity, integrations, storefront UX, and day-to-day operations.

For eCommerce decision makers, the real question is not just whether the store can move. It is whether the migration can be executed without disrupting revenue, damaging search visibility, or creating a new layer of technical debt.

Magento gives brands a high degree of flexibility, but self-hosted Adobe Commerce and Magento environments also require server setup, installation, and ongoing operational responsibility. BigCommerce, by contrast, is positioned as a SaaS platform with built-in B2B capabilities and Multi-Storefront support that can reduce platform overhead for the right business.

What is a Magento to BigCommerce migration?A Magento to BigCommerce migration is the structured transfer of products, customers, orders, content, URLs, integrations, and storefront functionality from Magento to BigCommerce, with SEO protection, QA, and launch planning built in.

Table of Contents

• Why Brands Move from Magento to BigCommerce
• Magento vs BigCommerce: What Changes
• What Migrates and What Does Not
• Step-by-Step Magento to BigCommerce Migration Plan
• Magento to BigCommerce Migration Timeline
• SEO, GEO, and AEO Considerations During Migration
• Common Migration Risks to Avoid
• When to Hire a Magento to BigCommerce Migration Agency
• Why CommerceShop Is a Strong Magento to BigCommerce Migration Partner
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Conclusion

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Why Brands Move from Magento to BigCommerce

Most brands do not leave Magento because it is weak. They leave when the cost, complexity, and maintenance burden of running it start to outweigh the commercial benefits.

Common reasons include:

• Lower platform overhead
• Reduced infrastructure and maintenance burden
• More built-in functionality
• Easier admin workflows for internal teams
• B2B and multi-storefront flexibility
• Reduced dependency on extension-heavy maintenance

BigCommerce’s B2B Edition supports functionality such as buyer portals, quotes, and multi-storefront administration, which makes it appealing for brands that have outgrown simpler B2C-only workflows.

A migration is also the right time to improve conversion performance, not just recreate the current store. Baymard’s research states that the average large eCommerce site can improve conversion by 35.26% through better checkout design. McKinsey reports that personalization most often drives 10% to 15% revenue lift. Those two points are why replatforming should include UX, merchandising, and buyer journey improvements alongside the technical move.

Source: Baymard Institute, McKinsey

A Magento to BigCommerce migration should be treated as a revenue project with technical constraints, not an IT project with optional revenue upside.

Magento vs BigCommerce: What Changes

Before migrating, decision makers need to understand that Magento and BigCommerce do not operate the same way.

Adobe’s documentation confirms self-hosted installation responsibilities for Adobe Commerce, while BigCommerce documentation highlights B2B Edition and Multi-Storefront capabilities. BigCommerce’s pricing page also states there are no additional platform transaction fees.

What Migrates and What Does Not

Some assets move cleanly. Others need to be rebuilt, reconfigured, or replaced.

Usually migrates cleanly

• Products
• Product images
• Categories
• Customer records
• Order history
• CMS pages
• Blog content
• Basic SEO metadata
• Reviews, depending on the review platform

Usually needs rebuilding or remapping

• Magento modules and custom extensions
• Custom checkout logic
• ERP, OMS, CRM, and search integrations
• Product attributes and custom data structures
• Theme and frontend templates
• Promotions and pricing logic
• Advanced B2B workflows if currently custom-built

Important limitation

• Customer passwords do not transfer and should be handled through a reset flow after launch

Can Magento customer passwords migrate to BigCommerce?No. Passwords should be handled through a customer reset process after launch.

Step-by-Step Magento to BigCommerce Migration Plan

Phase 1: Discovery and migration planning

Start by defining scope, constraints, dependencies, and success metrics.

What happens

• Audit Magento stores, domains, and sales channels
• Document every integration and dependency
• Identify business-critical workflows
• Define migration success metrics

Why it matters

This phase prevents under-scoping. Most migration failures begin with hidden functionality, missing integrations, or unclear ownership.

Common risks

• Unknown custom modules
• Conflicting internal priorities
• Unrealistic timelines

Best practices

• Assign one decision owner per workstream
• Separate launch-critical requirements from post-launch enhancements
• Define measurable launch success early

Phase 2: Catalog, customer, and order data audit

Audit the source data before migrating anything.

What happens

• Review products, variants, attributes, pricing, inventory, and media
• Identify discontinued SKUs and duplicate records
• Confirm how customer groups and order statuses should map
• Decide how much order history to move

Why it matters

Dirty data becomes migration debt on the new platform.

Common risks

• Duplicated products
• Inconsistent attributes
• Obsolete categories
• Unusable order history imports

Best practices

• Archive what the business no longer needs
• Normalize product attributes before migration
• Confirm reporting and search needs early

Phase 3: URL and SEO migration planning

This phase protects discoverability and authority.

What happens

• Export indexed Magento URLs
• Identify top-traffic and top-revenue pages
• Build the redirect strategy
• Preserve titles, descriptions, canonicals, and schema where possible

Why it matters

A missed redirect on a high-value page can create outsized SEO damage.

Common risks

• Incomplete redirect mapping
• Metadata loss
• Broken internal links

Best practices

• Manually validate your highest-value URLs
• Preserve strong metadata unless there is a reason to change it
• Treat redirects as a planning workstream, not a launch-day task

Redirect mapping is not a cleanup task. It is one of the most important planning tasks in the entire migration.

Phase 4: BigCommerce architecture and feature mapping

Define how the new store should operate before build work accelerates.

What happens

• Select the BigCommerce plan and feature set
• Confirm category logic and navigation structure
• Decide on B2B, Multi-Storefront, and regional requirements
• Map Magento modules to BigCommerce native features, apps, or custom integrations

Why it matters

Late architecture changes compress QA, increase cost, and create launch risk.

Common risks

• Assuming Magento logic has a direct BigCommerce equivalent
• Overlooking B2B requirements
• App replacement gaps

Best practices

• Document every module replacement path
• Confirm operational workflows before design is finalized
• Validate app and integration fit early

Phase 5: Theme and storefront migration decisions

Decide whether to replicate, refresh, or redesign the storefront.

What happens

• Review current UX performance
• Decide whether to keep or change the current visual direction
• Build or customize the BigCommerce theme
• Recreate templates for key page types

Why it matters

A replatform is a chance to fix weak UX, not just reproduce it.

Common risks

• Recreating poor PDP or checkout patterns
• Letting visual replication override usability
• Treating design and conversion as separate decisions

Best practices

• Preserve what works commercially
• Improve weak navigation, PDP, and checkout flows during the rebuild
• Keep design decisions tied to buyer behavior

Phase 6: Integration mapping and rebuild planning

This phase protects operational continuity.

What happens

• Reconnect or rebuild ERP, CRM, OMS, tax, shipping, reviews, and search systems
• Validate field mapping and sync logic
• Test order export and fulfillment scenarios

Why it matters

Integration failures cause more operational pain after launch than many visible front-end issues.

Common risks

• Broken order sync
• Inventory mismatches
• Failed tax or shipping calculations
• CRM data loss

Best practices

• Test full business workflows, not just field connections
• Validate refunds, returns, and edge-case order states
• Define fallback procedures if a sync fails post-launch

Phase 7: Test migration and staging QA

Run test migrations before the final move.

What happens

• Migrate a subset of products and content first
• Validate category structure, media, customer records, and orders
• Review staging output and fix mapping issues
• Repeat before the final import

Why it matters

Test migrations catch structural issues while they are still cheap to fix.

Common risks

• Treating the migration as one large import
• Under-testing admin workflows
• Skipping business-user QA

Best practices

• Include merchandisers, operations, and customer support in testing
• QA both front-end and admin workflows
• Validate real buyer journeys, not just page rendering

Phase 8: Redirects, analytics, and tracking validation

Before launch, confirm measurement and discoverability.

What happens

• Load redirect rules
• Validate analytics, pixels, and conversion events
• Check schema and crawlability
• Confirm sitemap and robots behavior

Why it matters

If tracking or discoverability breaks at launch, the team loses both visibility and control.

Common risks

• Missing conversion tracking
• Incorrect canonicals
• Broken sitemap configuration
• Schema loss on key templates

Best practices

• Validate events in staging and again after launch
• Confirm key pages remain indexable
• Test canonical and redirect behavior page by page

Phase 9: Cutover preparation

This is the highest-risk phase of the project.

What happens

• Freeze content and catalog changes
• Run the final delta migration
• Lower DNS TTL in advance
• Set go/no-go criteria
• Prepare internal monitoring teams

Why it matters

Cutover mistakes create split systems, missed orders, and support issues.

Common risks

• Launching during a bad traffic window
• No rollback criteria
• Catalog changes continuing during final sync

Best practices

• Launch during the lowest-traffic practical window
• Keep rollback triggers documented
• Keep the old store intact until stability is confirmed

Phase 10: Launch and post-launch monitoring

Go-live is not the finish line.

What happens

• Switch DNS
• Validate live checkout and payments
• Confirm redirects, analytics, and order flow
• Monitor crawl errors, revenue, and sync logs

Why it matters

The first 7 to 14 days determine whether the migration stabilizes quickly or enters recovery mode.

Common risks

• Slow response to 404 errors
• Undetected integration failures
• Checkout issues surfacing after launch
• Weak customer communication

Best practices

• Review Search Console and 404 logs daily
• Compare live performance against baseline
• Hold formal 7-day and 14-day post-launch reviews

Magento to BigCommerce Migration Timeline

A realistic timeline depends more on complexity than product count alone.

Simple migration

6 to 8 weeks

• Smaller catalog
• Limited integrations
• Minimal custom functionality
• No major redesign

Mid-market migration

10 to 14 weeks

• Moderate catalog complexity
• Multiple integrations
• UX refresh in scope
• SEO continuity is important

Complex migration

14 to 20+ weeks

• ERP, OMS, or CRM dependencies
• Heavy customization
• B2B workflows
• Multi-storefront or multi-region rollout
• Significant data cleanup required

SEO, GEO, and AEO Considerations During Migration

Magento to BigCommerce migration planning now has to support both traditional search visibility and AI-driven discovery.

Why redirect mapping is critical

If a high-performing Magento URL disappears without a proper 301 redirect, you do not just lose rankings. You lose the authority, crawl path, and citation potential attached to that page.

Why metadata preservation matters

Titles, descriptions, canonicals, and on-page structure help search engines and AI systems understand what a page is about. Migration is the wrong time to rewrite high-performing metadata without a reason.

Why structured data matters

Schema preserves product, review, breadcrumb, and content context. It improves machine readability and supports both search features and answer extraction.

Why does this affect GEO and AEO too

If migration breaks structure, internal linking, or canonical clarity, AI systems are less likely to retrieve, summarize, or cite your content correctly. The same mistakes that reduce organic visibility can also reduce answer-engine visibility.

How do you preserve GEO and AEO during a Magento to BigCommerce migration?Preserve high-value URLs where possible, map every changed URL with a 301 redirect, keep metadata and schema intact, maintain clear heading structure, and protect authoritative content from being thinned out during the move.

Practical checklist

• Export and map all indexed Magento URLs
• Preserve strong metadata
• Rebuild schema intentionally
• Keep answer-rich content blocks intact
• Validate internal linking after migration
• Re-submit the sitemap and monitor crawl errors immediately after launch

Common Migration Risks to Avoid

1. Poor extension auditHidden Magento modules create scope surprises late in the project.
2. Dirty product dataBad source data creates bad destination data.
3. Redirect failuresThese create the fastest SEO damage.
4. Broken integrationsA working storefront can still fail operationally if orders, inventory, or customer data stop syncing.
5. Underestimating QATechnical sign-off alone is not enough.
6. Rebuilding custom functionality too lateIf Magento-specific logic has no mapped BigCommerce path, launch timelines compress quickly.
7. No rollback planEvery serious migration needs one.
8. Weak post-launch monitoringMany preventable issues become expensive because nobody is watching the right signals after launch.

When to Hire a Magento to BigCommerce Migration Agency

An internal team can manage the migration when the catalog is clean, integrations are limited, the UX does not need a major revision, and the business has enough technical capacity available throughout the project.

Agency support is usually the better option when:

• the store has complex integrations,
• Magento modules drive critical workflows,
• SEO is a major revenue channel,
• B2B features are in scope,
• multiple teams or regions are involved,
• or the migration also needs CRO and UX improvement.

The more revenue-critical the migration is, the more expensive migration mistakes become.

Why CommerceShop Is a Strong Magento to BigCommerce Migration Partner

CommerceShop approaches the Magento to BigCommerce migration as both a technical and commercial project.

That means the work does not stop at data transfer and launch readiness. Migration planning includes SEO-safe replatforming, integration handling, QA discipline, and CRO-aware execution so the new BigCommerce store is not just live, but positioned to perform.

For brands evaluating Magento to BigCommerce migration services, that combination matters:

• structured migration planning,
• careful redirect and metadata handling,
• practical experience with integration-heavy builds,
• conversion-focused storefront execution,
• and post-launch support after go-live.

The goal should not be to recreate Magento on a different platform. It should be to move into BigCommerce with less operational friction and a stronger commercial foundation.

Last Words

A Magento-to-BigCommerce migration succeeds when planning is treated as seriously as build and launch.

The brands that come out ahead are the ones that audit data early, map functionality carefully, protect SEO deliberately, test integrations thoroughly, and treat cutover as an operational event rather than a technical checkbox.

If you are evaluating whether a Magento-to-BigCommerce migration makes sense for your business, the first useful step is not development. It is a structured assessment of your catalog, integrations, SEO exposure, and launch risk.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a Magento to BigCommerce migration take?

A straightforward migration can take 6 to 8 weeks. Mid-market projects usually take 10 to 14 weeks. Complex builds with integrations, B2B logic, or redesign work often take 14 to 20 weeks or more.

Can I migrate products, customers, and orders from Magento to BigCommerce?

Yes. Products, customers, order history, categories, and most content can migrate, though field mapping and data cleanup are often required.

Will my SEO rankings drop after migrating from Magento to BigCommerce?

Not if the migration is planned correctly. The biggest protections are complete redirect mapping, metadata preservation, structured data validation, and close post-launch monitoring.

Do Magento extensions transfer to BigCommerce?

No. Magento modules do not transfer directly. Each one must be replaced with a BigCommerce native feature, app, or custom integration.

Can customer passwords move from Magento to BigCommerce?

No. Customers should reset passwords after launch.

Should I redesign the store during migration?

Sometimes. If the current UX is weak, migration is a good time to improve it. If timing is tight, it may be smarter to migrate first and phase additional design changes later.

When is an agency the better choice?

When the migration includes complex integrations, B2B requirements, high SEO exposure, or a fixed launch timeline, agency support usually reduces risk and speeds execution.