It can be difficult to make the decision to leave your eCommerce platform. Sure, you’ve had issues with Magento, but you’ve used it for so long. When should you migrate, where should you migrate, and how do you migrate? This blog answers all of these questions with examples from Fyresite client, Chassis Unlimited. Or, you can watch the entire interview here.

When Should I Consider Migrating?

What drives merchants to make the decision to leave their previous eCommerce platform and migrate to Shopify? Here’s what Cody Ivie from Chassis Unlimited, a shop we migrated from Magento to Shopify Plus, and Sean Elstins, Fyresite co-founder, had to say about why merchants are leaving Magento.

Nonstop Maintenance

“You’re constantly wondering if the website was going to be working over the night, or the next morning,” said Cody.

Expensive Updates

“Because of the new required updates with Adobe, it is a very expensive upgrade with not much benefit to the merchant,” said Sean.

Sean is referring to the Magento updates. Everytime Magento rolls out an update or security patch, it takes hours for developers to update the store, costing the merchant money.

Is it worth the time and money to take care of this problem?

Sean says that this is a common question that merchants have before they decide to migrate off Magneto. If you’re asking yourself this question, this is a good indicator it may be time for a change.

Where Should I Migrate To?

The first question to ask yourself is “what am I looking for in a new platform?”

Some questions that Cody asked were:

“What platform can handle our product?”
“What platform has a user-friendly front-end and a merchant friendly back-end?”
“Can we use the platform to customize our site?”

Our recommendation? Shopify Plus. Shopify Plus does everything (and more) that Chassis Unlimited needed.

We recommend Shopify in the majority of cases. Why? Shopify has multiple tiers, which allows you to make the best choice for your business. While Shopify Plus is our highest recommendation (we’re also Arizona’s first Shopify Plus Partner), the $2000/month payment may not be realistic for all shops. However, you can migrate into a lower tier, and upgrade to Shopify Plus later down the road. You can read when we recommend merchants use Shopify Plus here.

How Do I Migrate?

There are some important things that you have to determine before you migrate. The number one most important thing? Determine your needs.

“It really depends on the individual merchant situation, right? ‘Cause there’s eCommerce on all scales, right? You could have a high volume merchant that sells one product. You could have a merchant that has 90,000 products,” said Sean. The needs of each merchant is different, so before any migration process can begin you need to know what you’ll need.

While you most certainly can do a migration yourself, we recommend that you partner with a Shopify Plus Partner like Fyresite to streamline the process. Working with us, we will help you determine your needs and migrate your shop seamlessly from Magento to Shopify Plus.

You can read our full beginners guide to Shopify Migration here.

Are you ready to move on up? Get started on your Fyresite Migration journey here.