What Actually Transfers When You Migrate to Shopify (and What Doesn't)

Knowing what moves - and what doesn't - is the difference between a clean migration and a scramble.

Ask a store owner what worries them most about switching platforms and the answer is almost always the same: "Am I going to lose my data?" It is the right question to ask, and the good news is that the honest answer is mostly no. Your data is safe. Whatever tools or experts you use to migrate will not delete anything from your old system, and you can walk it back at any time. But "mostly safe" is not the same as "everything moves automatically," and the gap between those two is where migrations go sideways.

This post is the detailed companion to our complete guide to migrating to Shopify. Here we go one level deeper into the data itself - what comes across cleanly, what needs a workaround, and the specific things that catch people out. Read this before you move anything, because the decisions you make here determine how much cleanup you are in for later.

The short version

Into Shopify you can import products, customers, historical orders, gift cards, gift certificates, store credits, blog posts, and individual pages. That covers the vast majority of what lives in a typical store. The important distinction is not what can move, but how you move it - because your method sets the ceiling on what comes across. A migration app can carry nearly all of the above. A manual CSV import handles a narrower slice. Knowing that up front stops you from choosing a method that quietly leaves half your data behind.

What transfers cleanly

Products

Products are the heart of the migration and they move well. Titles, descriptions, prices, variants, inventory counts, SKUs, and images all come across - through a CSV import for smaller catalogs, or automatically through a migration app for larger ones. The one thing to watch is formatting. Rich product descriptions with custom HTML, embedded tables, or platform-specific shortcodes can arrive looking rough, so budget time to spot-check your best sellers and tidy the descriptions that matter most.

Customers

Your customer list transfers, including names, email addresses, and shipping details. What does not transfer is passwords - and that is by design, not a flaw. Passwords are encrypted and cannot be exported from one platform and imported into another. When you launch, your customers simply reset their password the first time they log in, which is standard for any migration and not something they will find strange.

Historical orders

Past orders can come across, and for most businesses they should. Order history is how you understand repeat customers, lifetime value, and which products actually sell over time. This is one of the clearest reasons to use a migration app rather than a manual import - orders are exactly the kind of data a CSV cannot carry on its own. If your reporting and customer relationships depend on that history, make sure your chosen method includes it before you start.

Blog posts and pages

Shopify has a built-in blog, and your existing posts and standalone pages - About, FAQ, policies, landing pages - can be imported. Content is often underestimated during a migration because it does not feel as urgent as products, but your written pages are frequently your best SEO performers. Losing them, or letting their URLs break, is a quiet way to lose traffic you spent years earning. Treat content as data worth protecting, not an afterthought.

Gift cards, store credits, and certificates

Outstanding gift cards, store credits, and certificates can be brought over so your customers do not lose balances they have already paid for. This one matters more than its size suggests: nothing sours a launch faster than a loyal customer discovering their gift card vanished. Confirm these transfer, then test a few live before you announce the new store.

What does not transfer automatically

Here is where you need to be clear-eyed. Several important things either cannot move by CSV or need deliberate handling regardless of method.

Orders and blog posts via CSV

If you go the manual route, know the ceiling: a CSV import moves products and customers, but orders and blog posts cannot come across that way. For a small store with little order history and no blog, that is a fine trade. For anyone else, it is the single biggest reason to use a migration app or bring in help rather than forcing everything through spreadsheets.

Your theme and design

Your design does not migrate, and you would not want it to. Themes are built for a specific platform, so your storefront gets rebuilt in Shopify rather than copied over. That sounds like extra work, and it is - but it is also the best part of the whole project. A migration is a clean opportunity to fix the layout and speed problems you have tolerated for years. We cover the rebuild in detail in designing and building your store after migrating to Shopify.

Apps, plugins, and custom functionality

Anything your old store did through plugins or custom code - subscriptions, loyalty programs, product customizers, bespoke integrations - does not carry over. You replace that functionality with Shopify apps from the App Store or with custom development. Before you migrate, list every plugin your store relies on and find its Shopify equivalent, so you are not discovering a missing feature after launch. If a feature is genuinely custom, that is where bespoke Shopify development comes in.

SEO URLs and rankings

Your rankings do not "transfer" - they are earned by the URLs search engines already know. When those URLs change during a migration, you protect the rankings by mapping old URLs to new ones with 301 redirects. Skip this and you can lose organic traffic overnight. Do it properly and visitors and search engines both land where they should. This is the single most important technical task in any migration, and it is worth reading Shopify's replatforming SEO strategies before launch. We also covered the principles in 7 tips on redesigning your website without losing SEO.

The gotchas that catch people out

Beyond the big categories, a handful of smaller issues trip up otherwise smooth migrations:

Product URLs and handles change. Shopify structures product and collection URLs its own way. Even if your products transfer perfectly, their web addresses shift - which loops right back to redirects. Include product and collection URLs in your redirect map, not just top-level pages.

Reviews need their own path. Product reviews are social proof you cannot afford to lose, but they often live in a third-party app rather than your store's core data. Check whether your reviews are exportable and plan to import them into a Shopify reviews app, or you will launch with a wall of blank star ratings.

Metafields and custom data. If your current store holds custom data on products - specs, ingredients, sizing, downloadable files - that maps to Shopify metafields and metaobjects, but it does not always come across automatically. It is worth learning how these work; our tutorials on Shopify metafields and metaobjects are a good starting point.

Tax and shipping settings start fresh. Your tax rules, shipping zones, and rates are configuration, not data, so you set them up new in Shopify. Do not assume they carried over - double-check them before your first live order goes through.

Historical data is worth more than it looks

There is a temptation, especially with a large or old store, to treat a migration as a chance to "start clean" and leave the old order and customer history behind. Resist it for anything that drives decisions. Your order history is what tells you which products have real staying power versus which had one good month. Your customer records are what let you segment buyers, spot repeat purchasers, and market to people who already trust you. Walk away from that data and you are not decluttering - you are throwing out the analytics that took years to accumulate.

The nuance is that "keep everything" and "keep the useful things" are different strategies. Dead product variants, spam customer accounts, and test orders can stay behind. Genuine sales history and real customers should come with you. Decide that split deliberately during the prep stage described in our complete migration guide, rather than making the call in a hurry mid-import.

Test with a small batch before you commit

One habit separates smooth migrations from stressful ones: test a small sample before you move the whole store. Import ten products, a handful of customers, and a few orders, then inspect them closely inside Shopify. Did the variants map correctly? Are the images the right resolution? Did the product descriptions keep their formatting? Are prices and tax settings behaving? Catching a formatting problem on ten products is a minor fix. Catching it after you have imported five thousand is a weekend you will not get back. A free trial is perfect for this - you can spin one up and run a trial import before committing to anything.

How to make sure nothing slips through

The pattern behind every clean migration is the same: inventory first, migrate second, verify third. Before you move anything, write down every category of data and functionality your store depends on. Choose a migration method that can actually carry all of it - which for most established stores means a migration app rather than manual CSV. Then, after the import, verify against your list item by item rather than assuming the tool did its job.

If that sounds like a lot to hold in your head while running a business, it is - and it is exactly the kind of work we do for store owners. Abra handles migrations end to end: we audit your data, choose the right method, run the transfer, set up the redirects, and check everything against a real checklist before launch. You can see how we work on our migrate to Shopify page, or tell us what platform you are on and we will tell you exactly what will and will not come across for your specific store.

Want to look around Shopify first? Start a free trial and run a small test import - there is no better way to see how your own data behaves before you commit to the full move.

Disclosure: some links in this article are affiliate links. If you start a Shopify plan through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend tools we actually use with our own clients.