Migration cost is the number that stops most platform switches before they start, and it's also the hardest one to pin down. A quote can range from under $1,000 for a DIY migration to well over $100,000 for a complex, highly customized store, and most of that gap comes down to a handful of specific line items. Here's what affects the total cost.
Theme and design rebuild
Your storefront's look and feel almost never survives a platform migration untouched. A ready-made theme adjusted to match your brand typically runs $3,000–$5,000 on top of the theme cost itself. A fully custom design, built to match specific brand or UX requirements, can run $5,000–$20,000 or more depending on scope.
The deciding question is usually simple: can an existing template be adapted to your brand, or does the store need a ground-up rebuild?
Data migration
Products, customer records, order history, and pricing rules all need to move without corruption or loss. For a catalog in the low thousands of SKUs with standard fields, this typically runs $1,000–$10,000. Larger or more complex catalogs, especially with variants, bundles, or custom attributes, can push data migration costs to $20,000–$50,000 or more.
Migration tools speed this up, but manual cleanup and mapping are still standard practice, since automated tools rarely handle every edge case cleanly.
App and integration rebuilding
This is where costs often surprise merchants. Every app or extension tied to your current store, whether it's for shipping, subscriptions, reviews, or wholesale pricing, needs an equivalent on the new platform, and equivalents don't always exist. Rebuilding custom integrations with ERP, payment, or email systems typically runs $2,000–$10,000+, depending on how many systems are involved and how custom the original setup was.
SEO preservation and redirects
A migration can undo years of SEO work if URLs, metadata, and internal links aren't carried over deliberately. Proper redirect mapping and metadata preservation, done as a standalone project, usually costs $500–$5,000. It's often bundled into a broader migration package, but it's worth confirming it's actually included rather than assumed.
Testing and post-launch support
Before launch, checkout flows, payment processing, and mobile rendering all need testing across devices and browsers, typically $1,000–$5,000. After launch, budget for a stabilization period: staff training on the new admin, plus support hours for the inevitable small issues that only show up once real customers are using the store.
What to actually budget
Rolling those categories together, typical ranges look like this: a small store with a few hundred products and minimal customization often lands in the $2,000–$8,000 range. A mid-market store with more complex catalogs and standard integrations typically runs $8,000–$30,000. Highly customized or high-SKU migrations can reach $25,000–$100,000, and enterprise moves with ERP integrations and multi-region setups can exceed that.
Not every migration carries this price tag
The line items above assume you're rebuilding a theme, transferring data, and rewiring integrations largely from scratch, which is the standard path for most platform-to-platform moves. Some platforms handle migration differently by building it into onboarding rather than pricing it separately.
Merchant Tech's migration, for example, is included in its flat $79/month plan rather than billed as a separate project: the team recreates the storefront, transfers products, inventory, and subscriptions, sets up SEO redirects, and moves wholesale accounts, typically completed in about a day with the original store staying live until cutover (verified against merchant.tech's site as of 8/10/26). That removes the line items that usually dominate a migration budget - theme rebuild, data transfer, and integration work - though internal costs like staff training and reviewing the new store before launch still apply.
Whether that model fits depends on the platform you're moving to and how much custom functionality your current store depends on. Either way, the same rule applies before setting any migration budget: audit what you actually have (apps, customizations, integrations) before pricing out what it costs to move it.
Platform pricing and migration terms change, so confirm current details directly with any vendor before budgeting.
