Is a Shopify migration app enough for a B2B store?

Shopify's Store Migration app is listed as free, with Shopify as the developer. Its listing says it moves product and customer data into Shopify from Square, WooCommerce, Etsy, Wix, Amazon, eBay, Clover and Lightspeed R/X (Vend). You can upload a CSV file or, on supported platforms, connect your account to import automatically. The listing also notes that some platforms don't export all data or use compatible formats, so small edits in Shopify may be required.

Shopify's migration guide gives this example of the data a store move covers:

• Products
• Customers
• Historical orders, meaning orders that have already been fulfilled
• Gift cards, certificates and store credits
• Blogs and pages, such as a shipping policy or about page

Each data type has its own route. Products and customers can move by CSV file or migration app. Historical orders move by migration app, the Order API or the Transaction API.

Shopify does not present an app as the only path. Its guide also lists hiring a Shopify Partner to manage the migration, or building a custom migration with the Shopify API, and it says the best option depends on the amount and complexity of the data.

Shopify B2B is a different data model. Shopify says you must set up your B2B customers as companies to use Shopify B2B. A company location is the business you sell to, and each location can have its own tax ID, tax exemptions, shipping address, billing address, pricing, payment terms and contacts. Pricing then reaches buyers through catalogs. Those records need a plan of their own:

• Companies and locations: for bulk company import, Shopify's help points to a third-party app.
• Catalogs: Shopify documents how to export and import catalogs using CSV files.
• Customer accounts: you can't use legacy customer accounts for B2B, and passwords don't move by CSV. See can customer passwords be migrated to Shopify.
• Redirects: a separate step that protects search rankings. See what happens to SEO when you migrate.
• ERP sync: orders, inventory and pricing that must keep flowing after cutover.

Shopify B2B runs on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus plans, so the plan is rarely the blocker. The setup steps are in how to set up B2B on Shopify.

First, we scope what has to move and what has to keep syncing. Company-level pricing, net terms, customer and dealer hierarchies and quoting all move across in our Shopify migrations. A migration from another platform typically takes 10 to 16 weeks, with a median cutover around 14 weeks, as the Shopify B2B migration timeline explains.

Two published projects show the range. Pawstruck moved all website data and customer information from Magento to Advanced Shopify and completed the project within 45 days (Pawstruck case study). Kooks Headers and Exhaust replatformed retail and wholesale onto a single Shopify B2B and D2C store with Infor Visual ERP integrated and secure wholesale portals with custom pricing (Kooks case study).

Pawstruck shows what a straight data move looks like; Kooks shows why B2B pricing and an ERP connection turn a data import into a project. When the ERP has to stay connected, Uncap Connect starts at $8,000 for onboarding and then a flat $390 per month. To scope yours, Talk to Our Experts.