Five reasons Magento migrations cost more than every other migration path:
1. The EAV database structure makes data extraction complex
Magento uses Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) database architecture. Product data lives across multiple tables. Extracting clean, normalized data from a Magento store takes specialist knowledge that doesn't apply to any other source platform. Tools like Matrixify help, but the data verification work is real.
2. Configurable products need parent-child mapping
A Magento configurable product (one parent with multiple child SKUs for different sizes/colors) becomes a Shopify product with variants. Migration tools at default settings often create separate Shopify products for every variant. Catching this and mapping correctly takes manual review of every configurable product. On a 5,000-SKU catalog, that's days of work.
3. Customer groups need a migration strategy
Magento natively supports customer groups (B2B, wholesale, retail, VIP) with different pricing rules per group. Standard Shopify doesn't have customer groups — you fake it with customer tags or use Shopify Plus B2B catalogs. Either path requires planning, mapping, and verification. Skip this and your B2B customers see retail pricing on launch day.
4. Magento extensions have no direct Shopify equivalents
Magento stores typically have 15-40 extensions installed: rules engines, marketplace integrations, advanced analytics, custom reporting, ERP connectors. None of these port directly to Shopify. The work is replacing them with Shopify apps (or custom development on Plus), not migrating them. That's app-stack rebuild work on top of the data migration.
5. Magento stores are usually old, with thousands of indexed URLs
A typical Magento store has been running for 5-10 years. It has product URLs, category URLs, blog URLs, CMS pages, image URLs, and probably some legacy URLs from earlier site structures. The redirect map for a Magento store is often 10x larger than for a newer BigCommerce or Wix store. More URLs = more redirect work = more cost. There's no shortcut here.
Add custom theme work, integration rebuilds, and the inevitable post-launch SEO recovery, and the cost difference vs other migrations is real.