Shopify to Medusa migration: what moves, what you rebuild (2026)

Migrating Shopify to Medusa means moving your catalogue, customers and order history to a store you own, then rebuilding every feature that used to be a paid app. It is worth it when your business rules no longer fit Shopify, and a waste of money when they still do. Below is how I ran this for FlowerSweets.ie, a Dublin flower shop, and the checklist I use now.

Short answer: should you migrate Shopify to Medusa?

Migrate if you are paying for several apps to fake features Shopify does not have, and those features are core to how you sell. Stay on Shopify if your store is a standard catalogue with standard shipping, because Shopify does that well and a custom build will not make you more money. A Shopify to Medusa migration is a rebuild with a data move attached, so budget for it like one.

Why did FlowerSweets.ie leave Shopify?

FlowerSweets sells flowers and sweet gifts in Dublin. Three things did not fit an off-the-shelf platform:

• Same-day delivery. Flowers have a cut-off. The store needs its own rules for which delivery slots are still available today.
• Holiday days. On some days the shop takes no orders at all. That has to be blocked in checkout, without the owner remembering to switch something off.
• Real-time stock. Fresh stock runs out during the day, and the site has to know.

Each of these was possible on Shopify only through another app, and each app was another monthly fee. The new store runs on Medusa.js with a Next.js storefront, Stripe for payments and its own delivery logic. It blocks holiday days on its own. It runs on a rented server with no platform subscription. The owner manages products and promotions herself in a simple admin dashboard, and PostHog analytics shows which products and pages sell best.

The delivery rules, the holiday calendar and the stock logic used to be spread over several third-party apps, each with its own bill and its own settings page. Now they live in one codebase the owner owns, and the shop pays no platform subscription.

When should you not migrate?

I talk people out of this fairly often. Do not migrate if:

• Your apps cost less per month than a few hours of developer time per year would.
• You have nobody, in-house or external, to look after a server and upgrades.
• You rely heavily on Shopify-only channels or a specific app that has no equivalent you could build cheaply.
• Your problem is traffic or product photos. A new platform will not fix either.
• You want to launch next week. A proper migration needs time for testing and redirects.

If you are still deciding between the two platforms in general, read my Shopify vs Medusa comparison first. This post assumes you have already decided.

What moves from Shopify, and what do you have to rebuild?

Shopify lets you export products, customers and orders as CSV files, and the Admin API gives you everything in more detail. Medusa has its own data model, so every export needs mapping. Medusa also publishes an official Shopify migration guide, where an AI agent imports products, inventory and collections through Medusa's MCP server. It is a good start for the data. It does not rebuild your apps, emails or redirects.

The last row is where the real cost sits. In Medusa v2, custom rules like FlowerSweets' delivery slots go into a module, and multi-step processes like "check stock, reserve, take payment" go into a workflow. That is the right place for them, but someone has to write them.

What does the migration checklist look like?

This is the order I work in. Skipping ahead usually means doing things twice.

1. List every installed Shopify app, what it costs per month and what it actually does for you. Cross out the ones nobody uses.
2. Write the business rules in plain words: delivery areas, cut-off times, blocked days, discount logic.
3. Crawl the live Shopify store and export every URL, page title and meta description.
4. Export products, customers and orders. Decide which orders need to be live and which are archive.
5. Set up Medusa: regions, currency, tax settings, stock location, shipping options, payment provider.
6. Import products and check variants, prices and images by hand on a sample.
7. Build the storefront and the replacement features. Keep product URLs as close to the old ones as you can.
8. Rebuild transactional emails and test each one with real orders in test mode.
9. Write the redirect map and test it against the crawl from step 3.
10. Run full test orders through every delivery and payment path.
11. Switch DNS, submit the new sitemap, then import customers and send them an account activation email.
12. Watch Search Console and analytics daily for the first two weeks.

How do you protect SEO when moving from Shopify?

Shopify forces a fixed URL structure. Products live at /products/handle, collections at /collections/handle, pages at /pages/handle and blog posts at /blogs/blog-name/handle. Shopify also creates product URLs nested inside collections, like /collections/roses/products/red-bouquet. All of these need a home on the new site.

• 301 redirects by pattern. If the new store uses /shop/handle for products, one pattern rule covers all of /products/*. Add a separate rule for the nested collection paths so they go to the product, not the collection.
• Exact redirects for renamed items. Any product whose handle changes gets its own line in the map.
• Same titles and meta at launch. Change one thing at a time. Improve SEO copy a month later, once rankings have settled.
• New sitemap. Generate it from the Next.js storefront and submit it in Google Search Console on launch day.
• Keep the domain. The same domain in Search Console keeps your history. Moving domains at the same time adds risk for no gain.

With Medusa the redirects usually live in the Next.js storefront, either in its redirect config or in middleware that reads a redirect table. Medusa itself handles commerce data, not your old URL paths.

How much does Shopify cost compared to Medusa?

At the time of writing, Shopify's EUR prices are listed on shopify.com/pricing. Medusa's core is open source under the MIT licence and free to self-host, and Medusa Cloud prices are on docs.medusajs.com/cloud/pricing. Fill in your own app total from your Shopify billing page.

Run the numbers over three years. If your app total plus Shopify plan stays small, Shopify wins on cost. If you pay for several apps and the extra transaction fee, the custom build can pay for itself, though the break-even point depends entirely on your bill.

Decision checklist before you start

• I can name the specific features Shopify cannot do for me, and they affect sales.
• I know my monthly app total and my transaction fees.
• I have someone to maintain the store after launch.
• I accept a bigger upfront cost for lower monthly fees and full control.
• I will keep the same domain and spend time on the redirect map.

If you tick all five, a migration is probably a good idea. If you sell in more than one country, also read how I set up one Medusa store for several EU markets. My e-commerce development work starts from €1,999 excl. VAT, and the first 30-minute call is free, so you can bring your app list and I will tell you honestly whether moving makes sense. The full FlowerSweets build is on the FlowerSweets project page.

FAQ

How long does a Shopify to Medusa migration take?

It depends on how many Shopify apps you need to replace with your own logic, not on the number of products. A store with a plain catalogue and standard checkout moves much faster than one with custom delivery rules. I give a written timeline after looking at your current store and app list.

Will I lose my Google rankings if I move from Shopify to Medusa?

Not if every old URL gets a 301 redirect to its new equivalent and the page content and meta stays the same. Most ranking drops after a migration come from missing redirects for /products/ and /collections/ pages. Check Search Console for 404s in the weeks after launch and fix them quickly.

Do my customers have to create new accounts?

Their records move over: names, emails, addresses and order history. What changes is the login, so the usual approach is one short email after launch with a link to activate the account on the new store. Guest checkout works from day one for everyone else.

Is Medusa cheaper than Shopify?

On monthly fees it often is, because the Medusa core is free under the MIT licence and you pay for hosting instead of a subscription plus apps. The build itself costs more upfront than installing a theme. The saving only makes sense if your store would otherwise keep paying for several apps every month.

Do I need a developer to run a Medusa store after launch?

Not for daily work. Owners manage products, prices, promotions and orders in the Medusa admin dashboard themselves. You need a developer for new features, upgrades and server issues, so plan for some support time each year.

Evaldas Doda

Founder of DodaCraft, developer. I build websites, online stores and internal systems for businesses in Lithuania and abroad. I taught teenagers to programme for 7 years.