Shopware to Shopify Migration: A Practical Guide for Shopware 5 and 6 Stores

What moves in a Shopware to Shopify migration, and what doesn't

Most commerce data has a clear home on Shopify. The work is in the mapping.

• Products and variants: yes. Product numbers, prices, stock and media move to Shopify products and variants. Shopify now allows up to 2,048 variants per product, but still caps each product at three options, so Shopware products with four or more variant groups need restructuring.
• Categories and manufacturers: yes. Categories become collections (manual or automated). Manufacturers usually move to the vendor field.
• Properties and custom fields: yes, with mapping. Properties become metafields, which can power storefront filters through Shopify's Search & Discovery app. Custom fields move to metafields or metaobjects.
• Customers and addresses: yes. Include email marketing consent so you keep a lawful mailing list.
• Customer passwords: no. Passwords are stored as one-way hashes, so they can't move to any new platform. Customers activate their Shopify account or sign in with a one-time code.
• Order history: yes. Historical orders import through the Shopify API or a migration tool, linked to customers, without sending emails, taking payments or changing stock.
• Customer groups and advanced prices: yes, with mapping. These become customer tags with discounts, or B2B catalogues on Shopify Plus where pricing depends on the buyer.
• Rule Builder logic: recreated. Promotions, shipping and payment conditions are rebuilt as Shopify discounts, shipping profiles, or Shopify Functions for more complex logic.
• Shopping Experiences: rebuilt. Layouts become theme sections and templates. Content moves to pages, blog posts and metaobjects.
• Reviews: yes, via a review app. Export them and import them into your chosen Shopify review app.
• Languages and currencies: yes, with mapping. These map to Shopify Markets. Separate sales channels may become expansion stores.
• Gift cards and store credit: partly. Balances held in plugins are reconciled and recreated in Shopify.
• Subscriptions: depends. Subscription plugins move to a Shopify subscription app. Whether saved payment details can move depends on your payment provider.
• Themes and plugins: no. Nothing in your Shopware theme or plugins runs on Shopify. Each plugin is replaced by a native feature, an app or custom code.

Pre-migration checklist

Do this before anyone imports a single record.

1. Confirm the exact Shopware version and edition. Shopware 5 and Shopware 6 store data very differently, and that changes the extraction method.
2. List every plugin and what it actually does. Mark each as "native in Shopify", "needs an app", "needs custom work" or "drop it".
3. Document your Rule Builder rules. Group them by purpose: pricing, promotions, shipping, payment, customer segments.
4. Count the data. Products, variants, properties, customers, orders, reviews, pages. Volumes drive how long imports take.
5. Crawl the live site. Use Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to capture every indexable URL for every sales channel and language.
6. Pull 12 months of traffic data. From Google Search Console and GA4, list the pages that earn traffic, links and revenue. These are your redirect priorities.
7. Map integrations. ERP, PIM, warehouse, accounting, marketplaces, email. Note which system owns which data.
8. Agree a freeze window. Decide when content edits stop and when the final order delta runs.

Step-by-step Shopware to Shopify migration

1. Audit and scope. Use the checklist above to agree what moves, what gets rebuilt and what gets dropped.
2. Design the Shopify data model. Decide which properties become metafields, which become variant options, and which are only needed for filters. Get this right before building the theme, because templates depend on it.
3. Extract the data. For Shopware 6, use the Admin API or the built-in Import/Export module (Settings, Shop, Import/Export). For Shopware 5, use its API or direct database exports. Migration services such as Cart2Cart and LitExtension connect to both versions and suit simpler catalogues.
4. Transform and load. Clean and reshape the data into Shopify's format. For spreadsheet-based imports, Matrixify handles products, customers, orders, redirects, metafields and metaobjects. For complex catalogues we script against the Shopify API so every run is repeatable.
5. Run a test migration. Import everything into a development store. Reconcile counts and spot-check your most complicated products, best customers and oldest orders.
6. Build the storefront. Rebuild key templates and Shopping Experience layouts as theme sections that your team can edit.
7. Rebuild rules and integrations. Set up discounts, Markets, shipping, tax, payment methods and apps. Connect your ERP and other systems.
8. Test the business, not just the site. Place real orders through every payment method, market and shipping rule. Check that orders reach your warehouse and accounting.
9. Cut over. Freeze, run the final delta of new customers and orders, import redirects, switch the domain and verify tracking.
10. Monitor for 30 days. Watch Search Console for 404s and coverage changes, and check conversion by device and market.

SEO: URL mapping and 301 redirects for Shopware

Shopify uses fixed URL patterns: /products/handle, /collections/handle, /pages/handle and /blogs/blog-name/post-handle. Your Shopware URLs almost certainly look different, so nearly every indexable URL needs a 301 redirect.

Shopware 5 URL patterns

The default Shopware 5 product URL combines the category path, the numeric article ID and the product name, so a product might live at /shoes/trainers/123/blue-runner. Category URLs follow the category tree. Many Shopware 5 stores also have older technical or parameter-based URLs still indexed, so take your list from a crawl plus Search Console, not from the SEO router settings alone.

Shopware 6 URL patterns

By default, Shopware 6 product URLs use the product name followed by the product number, for example /blue-runner/SW10001. Category URLs follow the breadcrumb path, such as /shoes/trainers/. Shopware 6 also has technical URLs like /detail/<id> and /navigation/<id> that can appear in crawls. Many stores have customised these templates, so check the SEO settings and your crawl.

How to build the redirect map

1. Match products by product number (SKU), not by name. Names change; SKUs rarely do.
2. Map categories to the equivalent collection. If a category is being merged, send it to the closest match, not the homepage.
3. Repeat for every language. Shopify redirects apply across market and language subfolders, so create separate redirects where a specific subfolder needs a different target.
4. Import the map under Content, Menus, URL redirects using Shopify's CSV template. Standard stores allow up to 100,000 redirects; Plus stores allow far more.
5. Remember that Shopify only redirects URLs that would otherwise 404, and that URLs with query strings may not redirect as expected. Test a sample of each URL type after launch.

Also carry over meta titles and descriptions, image alt text and canonical tags, per language where translations exist.

Apps and integrations that replace Shopware features

• Properties and filters: metafields plus Shopify's free Search & Discovery app.
• Shopping Experiences: Online Store 2.0 theme sections and metaobjects.
• Rule Builder promotions: Shopify discounts, plus Shopify Functions for logic that native discounts can't express.
• Multi-language and multi-currency: Shopify Markets and the Translate & Adapt app.
• B2B pricing and customer groups: B2B on Shopify Plus, with company accounts and catalogues.
• Bulk data operations: Matrixify.
• Workflow automation: Shopify Flow, for tagging, alerts and routine admin tasks.

Shop around for each replacement. A plugin you bought years ago may now be a built-in Shopify feature, and fewer apps means fewer things to break.

Timeline and team for a Shopware migration

A typical Shopware to Shopify migration takes 4 to 6 weeks. Larger catalogues, several languages, B2B pricing or heavy ERP integration push that out. A rough split:

• Week 1: audit, data model and redirect inventory.
• Weeks 2 to 4: test migrations, storefront build, apps and integrations.
• Weeks 5 to 6: business testing, final sync, launch and monitoring.

On your side you need one decision-maker, someone who knows the catalogue, and whoever owns finance and fulfilment to sign off on orders and integrations. Your Shopware store keeps trading throughout.

Common Shopware migration mistakes

• Copying Rule Builder logic one to one. Rebuild the intent of each rule, not its mechanics. Many rules turn out to be obsolete.
• Forgetting the language versions. Redirects and metadata get done for the main language only, and the other markets lose rankings.
• Ignoring the three-option limit. Shopware products with many variant groups need a plan before import, not after.
• Redirecting everything to the homepage. Search engines can treat these as soft 404s. Map each URL to its closest equivalent.
• Assuming passwords migrate. Plan the account activation email and the copy that goes with it.
• Testing only the storefront. The launch-day problems are usually in tax, invoicing and ERP sync.