Magento to Shopify Plus: what changes for your team

Most teams we meet on Magento have a quiet routine of workarounds. A banner change waits for a developer. A price update goes through a release. Someone keeps a list of extensions that can't be updated together. The store works, but the team works around it.

So what changes when you move from Magento to Shopify Plus? Your team stops running a platform and starts running a store. Shopify looks after hosting, security and updates. Merchandisers edit products, collections and pages themselves. Checkout rules, trade pricing and automation move into settings, apps and Functions. Developers spend their time on the parts that make you different.

Who looks after hosting, patches and upgrades?

On Magento, someone owns the server. Someone applies security patches, plans version upgrades and checks that extensions still work afterwards. That work rarely shows up on a roadmap, but it takes real time.

Shopify Plus is hosted and maintained by Shopify. There's no server to size before a peak and no patch cycle to schedule. The platform updates without an upgrade project.

That changes the shape of your developer budget. The hours that went on keeping Magento current can go on the storefront, the checkout and the integrations your customers actually feel.

What can the team change without a developer?

This is usually the change people notice in the first month. In the Shopify admin, your team can handle most day-to-day jobs alone.

• Add and edit products, variants, images and metafields.
• Build collections, including automated ones based on product rules.
• Change homepage sections, banners and pages in the theme editor.
• Create discounts and schedule promotions.
• Manage customers, orders, refunds and staff permissions.

Fáilte Foods is the clearest example we can share. Before the move, a product, a promotion or a price for a new customer type waited on a developer. On Shopify Plus, the team merchandise, run promotions and bring customers on without a developer for every change.

The catch is the data underneath. If the catalogue arrives messy, the admin is just a faster way to edit mess. That's why we remodel attribute sets before anything moves. Our Magento to Shopify migration checklist covers that step in detail.

What happens to custom code and extensions?

Magento stores often run on extensions and custom modules built up over years. Shopify works differently. Each job gets a home in one of three places.

1. A native feature. Many jobs that needed an extension on Magento are standard on Shopify.
2. An app. Reviews, search, subscriptions and loyalty usually sit here.
3. A custom build. A pricing rule or workflow that's unique to your business can justify a custom app.

Checkout logic is the part to plan most carefully. On Shopify Plus, discount, shipping and payment rules are built with Shopify Functions and checkout extensions. Shopify has retired Scripts, so Functions is the route for new checkout logic. Our note on the move from Scripts to Functions explains what changed.

For your team, this means fewer moving parts to keep in step. It also means writing down what each extension does before the audit, not after launch.

How do trade customers and B2B work on Plus?

Many Magento stores run wholesale on customer groups and tier prices. On Shopify Plus, those terms move into B2B companies, locations, catalogues and payment terms. Each buyer signs in and sees their own price.

That changes who sets up a new account. At Fáilte Foods, a new trade buyer used to send a form, wait, then speak to a person. Now they register on the store, and the account is approved straight away or held for review. Customer onboarding rose by over 500%, and conversion sits above 30%.

Your sales team's job shifts too. Less retyping of orders, more looking after accounts. If you're setting up trade for the first time, our guide to Shopify B2B setup walks through it in order.

Does the ERP still run the show?

It should, if it did before. The move is a good moment to agree which system owns stock, prices, customers and orders. Two sources of truth is the wholesale problem we're asked to fix most often.

At Fáilte Foods, Business Central stays the source. A price change or a stock movement in the ERP is what the store shows. Normal orders go through to fulfilment without anyone typing them again. The team handle the exceptions, not the routine.

What does a good first month look like?

Cutover is the start, not the finish. The first few weeks on Shopify Plus are when your team builds new habits.

• Train merchandisers on the admin before launch, using your real catalogue on staging.
• Give each person the staff permissions their role needs, and nothing more.
• Agree who approves theme changes, discounts and app installs.
• Watch Search Console and 404s so the redirect map holds.
• Keep a short list of what the team still asks a developer for. That list shows where the next improvement sits.

Fáilte Foods kept working with us after launch, on retention and sales. The first month set the rhythm for that work.

Where Parallel Commerce helps

We run Magento and Adobe Commerce moves as data and SEO projects that happen to launch a Shopify store. The same people scope the catalogue, plan your team's new workflow and carry out the cutover. See how we approach Shopify migrations, or the detail on our Magento to Shopify migration page.

Want to know what Shopify Plus would change for your own team? Book a call and we'll talk it through with you.