What replatforming to Shopify costs

Replatforming quotes vary enormously, and the variation is explainable. The data transfer — the thing people picture — is rarely the expensive part.

Where the money goes

That integrations row is why two quotes for "the same" migration differ by a factor of three. A store with no external systems and a store syncing to an ERP are different projects wearing the same name.

Rough brackets

Planning numbers, not quotes. Region and complexity move everything — developer rates.

• Small catalogue, bought theme, no integrations: low-to-mid four figures, 3–5 weeks.
• Mid-size catalogue, designed theme, one integration: five figures, 6–10 weeks.
• Large catalogue, custom theme, multiple integrations: well into five figures, 3–6 months.
• Enterprise, multi-market, several systems: six figures.

What pushes you up

Catalogue size and complexity. Five hundred simple products and fifty thousand with deep attributes are different jobs. Attribute modelling into metafields is the work, not the import.

How untidy the old data is. Years of inconsistent entry means cleaning before importing, and cleaning is slow.

Number of indexed URLs. Redirect mapping scales with URL count. A store with 40,000 indexed URLs has a workstream, not a task.

Integrations. Each external system is its own project with its own error handling and reconciliation — ERP integration.

Custom functionality on the old platform. Anything bespoke has to be replaced by a native feature, an app, or custom development. Auditing what actually exists usually finds features nobody uses.

Design ambition. A bought theme configured, versus a designed theme, versus fully custom — an order of magnitude apart. Templates vs custom.

Multi-store or multi-market. Decide Markets or separate stores early; it changes the whole plan.

The costs that get left out of quotes

Check for these specifically. Their absence is why one quote is cheaper:

• Redirect mapping and verification. The highest-stakes item and the most commonly missing.
• Content migration with metadata intact. Not just moving pages — bringing titles and descriptions.
• Testing on real devices, with a real transaction.
• Post-launch monitoring — crawl errors and rankings for a month.
• A fix period.
• Handover and documentation.
• Training for whoever runs the store.

A quote that's a third cheaper is usually cheaper by exactly these.

Ongoing costs change too

Not just the project. After launch: the Shopify plan, the platform transaction fee if you're not on Shopify Payments, and app subscriptions replacing functionality that was built into the old platform.

That last one surprises people. Run the numbers before committing — what a store really costs to run.

Where to save without hurting

• Use a good base theme and put the budget into the parts that differentiate.
• Phase it. Launch the catalogue and the core experience; add the nice-to-haves once live.
• Prepare content yourself. It's the most common cause of delay and it's work you can do.
• Audit before rebuilding. A third of the old site's features are typically unused.
• Use a connector first for integrations, custom only for what it can't express.

Where not to save

• Redirects. Cutting this is how a replatform loses its rankings, and recovering them costs more than the saving.
• Testing with a real transaction.
• Data modelling. Cheap now, a rebuild later.
• Content metadata. The pages existing isn't enough.

Contingency

Hold back 15–20%. Not because the quote is wrong — because a third-party system will behave unexpectedly, or you'll see it working and want something you couldn't have predicted. Projects with no contingency end in a compromise or an awkward conversation.

The data transfer is a fortnight. The design, the redirects and the integrations are the project — and the redirects are the cheapest line to cut and the most expensive to have cut.