PrestaShop to Shopify migration guide

A PrestaShop to Shopify migration means exporting your products, customers, and orders, mapping every old URL to a 301 redirect so you keep your Google rankings, rebuilding the theme in Shopify's Online Store 2.0, and cutting over in a staged, tested launch. Done right, it costs ₹1,25,000–₹6,00,000 (about $1,500–$7,000) and takes three to six weeks.

I am a senior Shopify developer based in Delhi, India, and I have moved self-hosted stores off PrestaShop, WooCommerce, and Magento for D2C brands in India and abroad. PrestaShop migrations have their own traps — module overrides, SEO-friendly URL rewrites, and multi-store setups — so this is the honest, developer's-eye version: what actually moves, what does not, how the redirects work, and what it costs.

Why move off PrestaShop at all?

PrestaShop is a capable open-source platform, and if it is genuinely working for you, you do not have to move. But the brands who call me have usually hit the same wall: PrestaShop is self-hosted, so you own the hosting bill, the security patches, the PHP version upgrades, and every module conflict that breaks checkout at 11pm.

That maintenance tax is invisible until it is not. A PrestaShop upgrade that clashes with three paid modules, a server that buckles on your festive-season traffic spike, a checkout that mysteriously drops conversions after a patch — these are the recurring costs that do not show up in a pricing comparison but eat your time and revenue.

Shopify's trade is simple: you give up server-level control and get a fully hosted, maintained, fast platform in return. No patching, no hosting, a checkout Shopify optimises for you, and a deeper app ecosystem for marketing, reviews, and CRO. For a brand whose job is selling — not running servers — that is usually the right trade. If you are still weighing the platform itself, is Shopify worth it in India and Shopify vs WooCommerce for Indian D2C both go deeper on the decision.

What actually moves from PrestaShop to Shopify?

The single biggest source of migration anxiety is "will I lose my data?" Here is the honest breakdown of what transfers cleanly, what transfers with caveats, and what does not carry over at all.

Two things trip people up. First, passwords never migrate from any platform — that is a security feature, not a limitation; customers reset on first login and it is completely normal. Second, modules do not carry over. PrestaShop modules and Shopify apps are separate ecosystems, so every active module needs to be matched to a Shopify equivalent during scoping. That module audit is the most important planning step, and I cover it below.

How do the SEO-safe 301 redirects work?

This is where migrations live or die, so read this part twice. PrestaShop and Shopify build URLs differently. A PrestaShop product often looks like /12-blue-widget.html or /en/blue-widget, with category paths and friendly-URL rewrites configured in your SEO settings. Shopify uses a fixed structure: /products/blue-widget, /collections/widgets, /pages/about.

If you flip the switch without mapping those, every URL Google has indexed — every product, category, CMS, and manufacturer page — returns a 404. You orphan your entire ranking history overnight. This is the single most common way stores tank their traffic during a migration, and it is entirely avoidable.

The fix is a complete 301 redirect map: a one-to-one list from every old PrestaShop URL to its new Shopify path. Here is the pattern:

I crawl the live PrestaShop site to capture every indexed URL, cross-check against Google Search Console's coverage report and your top pages by traffic, then build the redirect map so no URL with rankings or backlinks is left behind. Redirects go live at cutover, titles and meta descriptions carry across intact, and the XML sitemap gets resubmitted. Do this properly and rankings typically recover within a few weeks; the deeper playbook is in Shopify migration without losing SEO.

What is the module and app equivalence?

PrestaShop stores lean on modules — often a dozen paid ones plus custom overrides. None of them run on Shopify, so the scoping step is a line-by-line audit: list every active module, note what it does, and match it to a Shopify app, a native feature, or custom code. Most common needs have strong Shopify equivalents:

• Product reviews (PrestaShop reviews module) → Judge.me, Loox, or Okendo
• Related products / upsells → native recommendations or apps like ReConvert
• Faceted / layered navigation → Shopify Search & Discovery (free) or Searchanise
• Multi-currency → Shopify Markets, native
• Newsletter / abandoned cart → Klaviyo or Omnisend (see Klaviyo vs Omnisend vs Mailchimp)
• Custom checkout fields / logic → Shopify Functions on Plus, or app-based on standard plans

The honest part: bespoke PrestaShop overrides — custom pricing rules, a heavily modified checkout, a specific B2B workflow — sometimes need rebuilding rather than swapping. That is normal, and it is exactly why the module audit belongs at the start of a migration, not after cutover when a surprise blows your budget. On the plus side, be selective — every app you add carries a performance and monthly-cost overhead, so a migration is a good moment to drop modules you were only tolerating.

The full PrestaShop to Shopify migration steps

Here is the sequence I actually follow, in order. The order matters more than any single step.

1. Audit and scope. Catalog the PrestaShop store: product count, variant complexity, active modules, custom overrides, multi-store setup, and top-traffic URLs. This produces the fixed quote and the timeline.
2. Export the data. Products, customers, orders, and CMS content pulled from PrestaShop's back office CSV exports or directly from the database for larger or messier catalogs.
3. Map and clean. Transform PrestaShop's structure into Shopify's — combinations to variants, categories to collections, manufacturers to vendors. This is where dirty legacy data gets cleaned rather than carried forward.
4. Import to a staging store. Everything loads into a development store, not your live one, so nothing customer-facing changes yet.
5. Rebuild the theme. A fresh Online Store 2.0 theme that matches your brand — not a lift-and-shift of the PrestaShop template, which would be slower and dated. If you want a custom look, custom theme vs premium theme explains the choice.
6. Build the redirect map. Every old URL to its new Shopify path, cross-checked against Search Console.
7. Test everything. Checkout, payments, taxes, shipping rates, emails, mobile speed, redirects. Nothing goes live untested.
8. Cutover. Point DNS to Shopify, activate redirects, resubmit the sitemap, keep PrestaShop read-only as a fallback for a short window.
9. Post-launch watch. Monitor Search Console for crawl errors, watch conversion rate, fix anything the real-world traffic surfaces.

If you want this as a printable list, the Shopify migration checklist for D2C brands covers the same ground in checklist form.

How long does it take?

A realistic timeline for a standard D2C PrestaShop store:

Small, clean catalogs move faster — two to three weeks is achievable. What stretches a timeline is scale (tens of thousands of SKUs), multi-store PrestaShop setups, heavy custom overrides, or a Shopify Plus build with B2B and international logic layered on. For a fuller breakdown of what drives the clock, see how long a Shopify migration takes.

What does a PrestaShop to Shopify migration cost?

Here are real numbers, in INR and USD. These are for the migration work — data, redirects, theme rebuild, and testing — not the Shopify subscription, which is separate.

What moves your quote up or down: catalog size, variant complexity, how many custom overrides need rebuilding versus a simple app swap, whether you want a fully custom theme, and whether B2B or international logic pushes you to Plus. Every engagement starts with a written scope, a fixed price, and a Definition of Done before any work begins — no open-ended hourly billing. The wider Shopify cost picture is in what it costs to build a Shopify website.

Do not forget the Shopify subscription

The migration is a one-time cost. The Shopify plan is ongoing. As of 2026 (verify current numbers on shopify.com/in/pricing):

Annual billing saves roughly 25%. One thing PrestaShop store owners appreciate: on Shopify Payments there is no third-party gateway transaction fee, versus roughly 2% on Basic, 1% on Shopify, and 0.5% on Advanced if you use an external gateway. The full plan breakdown is in Shopify pricing plans India 2026, and payment specifics in Shopify payments, COD, and GST in India.

Do I need Shopify or Shopify Plus?

Most PrestaShop stores fit comfortably on Shopify or Advanced. You only need Plus when you have real requirements that standard Shopify cannot meet:

• True B2B / wholesale with per-customer-group pricing — common in PrestaShop's customer-group model. See Shopify Plus B2B wholesale.
• Many international markets with local pricing, currencies, and domains — Shopify Markets from India covers this.
• Checkout customization beyond standard limits, via Shopify Functions.

If your PrestaShop store leans heavily on multi-store or advanced customer-group pricing, that is the signal to scope a Plus build. If you are unsure, when to upgrade to Shopify Plus walks through the thresholds honestly — Plus is a real cost step, and I will tell you if you do not need it yet.

The most common PrestaShop migration mistakes

Four things I see go wrong, all avoidable:

1. No redirect map. The number-one traffic killer. Every indexed URL needs a 301. No exceptions.
2. Lift-and-shifting the theme. Recreating the old PrestaShop look pixel-for-pixel wastes the migration. Rebuild fresh in Online Store 2.0 for speed and a modern checkout.
3. Ignoring the module audit until cutover. A surprise custom override that needs rebuilding, discovered late, is how budgets and timelines blow up.
4. Cutting over on a Friday, or during peak season. Migrate in a quiet window, keep PrestaShop read-only as a fallback, and never launch into your Diwali or sale-season rush.

Get those four right and a PrestaShop migration is calm and boring — which is exactly what a good migration should be.

What's next

If you are on PrestaShop and weighing a move, the Shopify migration expert page lays out how I run migrations — SEO-safe redirect mapping, zero data loss, a written fixed price, and direct access to the developer doing the work, not an account layer. Tell me your catalog size, your active modules, and your top-traffic URLs, and I will give you an honest fixed quote and timeline.

Ready to scope it? Start with a quick project brief or get in touch and I will reply within 24 hours.

Related reads

• Shopify migration checklist for D2C brands — the full pre-launch checklist.
• Shopify migration without losing SEO — the redirect and ranking playbook in depth.
• How long a Shopify migration takes — realistic timelines by store size.

Sources

• Shopify — migration guide
• PrestaShop — official documentation
• Shopify — India pricing