If you’ve hit BigCommerce’s ceiling as a dropshipper, migrating to Shopify in 2026 is the right move at this stage. The platform gap has widened significantly: Shopify’s app ecosystem, supplier integrations, and checkout conversion rates now pull ahead in almost every metric that matters for high-volume dropshipping.
The good news? The migration itself is much easier than it used to be. BuildYourStore generates your new Shopify store in under two minutes using AI, which means your storefront foundation is ready before you even touch your data.
From there, it’s just a step-by-step process. In this BigCommerce to Shopify migration guide, I’ll share everything you need to know: why most sellers are making the switch, how to prepare your store for the move, transferring your data without gaps, setting up 301 redirects, and launching clean without losing sales in the process.
Why BigCommerce Sellers Are Moving To Shopify In 2026
BigCommerce’s June 2026 pricing changes are pushing a lot of sellers out of the platform. The new Open Payment Provider Fee adds extra charges for using non-BigCommerce payment gateways: 2% on the Core plan, 1% on Growth, and 0.6% on Scale.
No transaction fees was the one argument BigCommerce always had over Shopify. That advantage is gone, eating into margins that are already tight for dropshippers.
Making it worse, GMV thresholds dropped at the same time, so sellers who were comfortably sitting on a lower plan are now being auto-upgraded to pricier tiers without any change in their business.
On the other hand, Shopify’s app ecosystem is another major pull factor. With thousands more apps than BigCommerce’s marketplace, you get far more options for automation, supplier integrations, and marketing tools.
Today, Shopify commands 28% of the global e-commerce platform market with 5.6M+ active stores, and enterprise adoption through Shopify Plus continues to accelerate year over year.
In this context, Shopify dropshipping offers better automation workflows, more supplier connections through apps like AutoDS, and direct integration with AI store builders like BuildYourStore.
What To Do Before You Start The Migration
Rushing straight into a migration without prep work is how you lose data and break things. Spend an hour on these three tasks first, and the actual migration will go smoothly.
Back Up Your Bigcommerce Data
Log in to your BigCommerce admin and export everything you might need. Start with your products CSV (including variants, descriptions, and pricing), then export your customer list and order history. Also, download all product images to a local folder since they won’t transfer automatically in every migration method.
Save your current URL structures, too. Open a spreadsheet and document every product URL, collection URL, and page URL that gets organic traffic. You’ll need this list when setting up redirects later.
Set Up Your New Shopify Store With BuildYourStore
Before you migrate anything, you need a Shopify store to migrate into. Start by signing up for BuildYourStore for free. Choose your niche, pick your favorite visuals, and the AI builds a complete store with a high-converting theme, 10 winning products, and a free .store domain in under two minutes.
This gives you a fully functional Shopify store as your migration destination. You can customize the theme and products later, but having a professional-looking store ready from the start means you’re not building and migrating at the same time.
Otherwise, you can take the manual route and create a Shopify store from scratch. But, in this case, you’ll spend much more time configuring themes, installing apps, setting up payment gateways, and getting your store ready before the actual migration work begins.
Map Your URL Redirects
This is the step most people skip, and it costs them months of lost search traffic. Open the spreadsheet you started during your data backup and add a second column for the new Shopify URLs.
BigCommerce and Shopify use different URL structures by default, though BigCommerce gives merchants a choice:
- BigCommerce product URLs vary by your store’s URL setting. Common formats include /product-name (Short), /products/product-name (Long), or /category/product-name (Category).
- Shopify uses /products/product-name for all products.
Check your BigCommerce URL structure under Store Setup → Store Settings → URL Structure before mapping, since your redirect work will vary significantly depending on which format your store uses.
Then, map each old URL to its new Shopify equivalent so you can set up 301 redirects after the migration.
How To Migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify Step By Step
With your data backed up, your new Shopify store ready, and your redirect map prepared, it’s time to move everything over. Follow these five steps in order.
Step 1: Import Your Products To Shopify
With your BYS-built Shopify store ready as the destination, you have three solid options for importing products, depending on how much control you need.
1. CSV importing
Shopify’s built-in product importer is free and lives in your Shopify admin under Products → Import. Export your product CSV file from BigCommerce (Products → Export Products), then reformat it to match Shopify’s CSV column structure before uploading. It handles standard product data, including titles, descriptions, prices, variants, and images.
2. Advanced CSV importing
For stores with complex product data, Matrixify gives you more control over field mapping. You export from BigCommerce as usual, but instead of Shopify’s basic importer, you work through Matrixify’s Excel or CSV templates, letting you inspect and edit every value before the import runs. The free Demo tier covers up to 10 items; paid plans start at $20/month for larger catalogs.
3. API-based automated migration
If you’d rather not touch CSV files at all, LitExtension and Cart2Cart connect directly to your BigCommerce store via API and handle the transfer through a guided wizard—no exports, no reformatting, no coding required. LitExtension is the stronger pick for BigCommerce specifically, as it also migrates categories, customer groups, order history, and SEO URLs alongside products.
Whichever method you choose, review your imported data carefully. Check that product images are loaded correctly, variants are mapped properly, and pricing is accurate. Fix any issues before moving to the next step.
💡 Pro Tip: Run a test import with 5-10 products first to confirm field mapping is correct before importing your full catalog.
Step 2: Transfer Customers And Orders
Customer profiles (names, email addresses, and shipping addresses) can be imported to Shopify using the built-in CSV importer or a tool like Matrixify.
One important limitation: customer passwords cannot be transferred due to encryption. There’s no workaround for this. When customers visit your new Shopify store, they’ll need to create a new password using the “Forgot Password” flow.
💡 Pro Tip: You can send a notification email to your customer list before you switch over, letting them know you’ve upgraded your store and they’ll need to reset their password on the first visit
Order history is a separate matter. The native CSV importer doesn’t transfer it. For that, you’ll need an API-based tool like LitExtension or Matrixify. When migrated, past orders come in as read-only reference data: not editable, but visible in the customer’s account and in your admin for support purposes.
Step 3: Set Up 301 Redirects
This is the most important post-migration step. Without proper 301 redirects, every link pointing to your old BigCommerce URLs will hit a 404 error. That means lost search rankings, lost referral traffic, and confused customers.
Quick definitions before we continue:
- 404 error: What a browser returns when a URL no longer exists. For a migrating store, this happens when your old BigCommerce URLs stop working but nothing points visitors (or Google) to their new Shopify equivalents.
- 301 redirect: a permanent forwarding instruction that sends anyone hitting an old URL straight to the new one. Search engines transfer the SEO value of the old page to the new destination, which is why setting these up before launch is critical.
To set this up, go to your Shopify Admin, then Content → Menus → URL Redirects.
You can add redirects one at a time or upload your redirect spreadsheet in bulk. If you have hundreds of redirects, Matrixify can import them from a CSV file.
After uploading, test your redirects. Tools like Screaming Frog can crawl your old URLs and verify each one resolves to the correct new page. Spot-check your highest-traffic pages manually too. A single broken redirect on a top-ranking page can cost you significant revenue.
Step 4: Configure Payments, Shipping, And Settings
Set up Shopify Payments as your primary payment processor. It’s built in, has no transaction fees on Shopify plans, and supports all major credit cards plus Apple Pay and Google Pay. If you need additional gateways, Shopify supports over 100 third-party payment providers.
Configure your shipping zones and rates to match (or improve on) what you had on BigCommerce. Set up tax settings for your selling regions. If your BuildYourStore store is your migration destination, many essential apps come pre-installed, saving you the time of researching and configuring them individually.
Review your store policies, email notification templates, and checkout settings before going live. Small details like order confirmation emails and shipping notification copy make the difference between a polished store and one that feels half-finished.
Step 5: Test And Go Live
Place a test order using Shopify’s Bogus Gateway to verify the entire checkout flow works. Check every product page for correct images, descriptions, and pricing. Test on mobile since the majority of eCommerce traffic comes from phones.
💡 Pro Tip: While the Bogus Gateway is active, real customers cannot place live orders, so deactivate it as soon as your testing is done.
Confirm your 301 redirects are working by visiting a handful of old BigCommerce URLs. They should land on the correct Shopify pages without errors. When everything checks out, point your domain’s DNS records to Shopify. Shopify’s admin walks you through this under Settings, then Domains.
Your BigCommerce to Shopify migration is complete. If you used BuildYourStore to set up your destination store, you already have a professional theme, winning products, and essential apps in place. All that’s left is to start working on your Shopify marketing campaigns.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a BigCommerce to Shopify migration cost?
The BigCommerce to Shopify migration itself can be done for free using Shopify’s built-in Store Importer and manual CSV exports from BigCommerce. If you want a managed migration service like Cart2Cart, expect to pay between $29 and $299 depending on the number of products and customers. BuildYourStore sets up your destination Shopify store at no cost, so your only ongoing expense is Shopify’s monthly plan starting at $39/month.
Will I lose my SEO rankings when I switch platforms?
No, you won’t lose your SEO rankings when migrating from BigCommerce to Shopify as long as you set up 301 redirects correctly. Redirects tell search engines that your pages have permanently moved to new URLs, transferring the link equity and rankings to your new Shopify pages. Expect a small temporary fluctuation in rankings during the transition, but traffic should stabilize within a few weeks as Google recrawls your site.
Can I migrate customer passwords from BigCommerce to Shopify?
No, you can’t migrate customer passwords from BigCommerce to Shopify. Customer passwords are encrypted differently on each platform, so there is no way to transfer them. Your customers will need to use the “Forgot Password” option to create a new password on your Shopify store. Send them a heads-up email before you switch to reduce confusion and support requests.
How long does a BigCommerce to Shopify migration take?
Most dropshippers can complete the full BigCommerce to Shopify migration in one day. The data transfer itself takes a few hours depending on your catalog size. Setting up your new Shopify store with BuildYourStore takes under two minutes, which removes the biggest time sink from the process. Budget an extra day for testing and fixing any issues before going fully live.
Do I need to redesign my store after migrating to Shopify?
No, you don’t necessarily need to redesign your store after migrating to Shopify. If you use BuildYourStore to create your Shopify store, you get a high-converting theme that’s already designed for dropshipping. You can customize colors, fonts, and layouts, but the foundation is ready to sell from day one. Most sellers find they can start taking orders immediately after migration without any additional design work.
Start Selling On Shopify: Skip The Setup
Migrating from BigCommerce to Shopify gives you access to a bigger app ecosystem, better dropshipping integrations, and lower payment processing fees. The migration process is manageable in a single day when you follow the steps in this guide.
BuildYourStore builds your Shopify store with AI, pre-loads winning products, and gives you a free domain, so you can focus on migrating your business, not designing a store from scratch. Get your free store now and start your BigCommerce to Shopify migration without worrying about choosing a template or designing your product pages.
In the meantime, here are a few reads to continue learning about Shopify dropshipping:
