Replatforming from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify

Teams on Salesforce Commerce Cloud rarely come to us because the site is broken. They come because change has become slow. A new landing page needs a release. A promotion needs a developer. Merchandisers wait on a queue for jobs they'd rather do themselves.

A move from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify Plus can fix that, and it's very doable. It's also a serious data, integration and SEO project. The businesses that do it well phase the work, decide early what custom logic to rebuild, and protect their search equity and customers at cutover. The platform switch is the visible part. The planning underneath decides whether it pays off.

Why businesses move from Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, formerly Demandware, is built for large, complex operations. Businesses that move to Shopify Plus usually want two things. A lower operating cost, and a faster pace of change on the storefront.

Shopify's strength is in the day to day. Merchandisers can build collections, edit pages and launch campaigns in the admin. Apps cover a wide range of common jobs. Checkout logic runs through Shopify Functions, so custom rules sit on a supported platform. If you're still deciding on the plan itself, our post on whether Shopify Plus is worth it sets out how we'd weigh it.

What moves and what gets rebuilt?

It helps to split the work into three piles early.

• Data that moves. Products, variants, images, customers, addresses, order history and content pages.
• Logic that gets rebuilt. Promotions, pricing rules, search behaviour and anything a developer has customised over the years.
• Things that get retired. Features nobody uses, old campaign pages and integrations that no longer serve the business.

The third pile is where a replatform saves the most money. Years of enterprise development leave behind code that once mattered. Writing it down and deciding what to leave behind is one of the most useful things you can do in discovery.

Rebuilding custom logic the Shopify way

Most Salesforce Commerce Cloud stores carry custom work. Cartridges, custom controllers and integrations with other systems. On Shopify, each of those jobs finds a new home.

1. Storefront behaviour becomes theme sections and templates your team can edit.
2. Common jobs, such as reviews, search or subscriptions, often move to a public app.
3. Discount, shipping and payment rules move to Shopify Functions.
4. Business-specific workflows and back office syncs become custom apps.

We go through the customisations one by one and decide which route fits. If you want to understand how we make that call, our guide to choosing between a custom app and a public app covers it. Nothing gets rebuilt just because it existed before.

Handling multiple sites, markets and brands

Enterprise stores often run several sites for different countries, currencies or brands. That structure needs a clear plan on Shopify.

Many businesses can serve several countries from one Shopify store using Markets. Shopify now lets you customise theme settings and checkout for each market. We covered that in our post on customising your theme and checkout by market. Other businesses need separate stores, for example when brands or legal entities are genuinely separate.

We decide the shape in discovery, based on how you sell, who runs each site and how orders and payouts need to flow. That decision drives the catalogue structure, so it has to come first.

Protecting search equity and customers at cutover

A high-traffic store has a lot of search equity to lose. We inventory every URL that earns traffic, map one-to-one 301 redirects to the new Shopify URLs, and test them before the domain moves. Blanket redirects to the homepage aren't the plan. Our post on keeping your rankings through a migration covers the method in detail.

Customers need the same care. Accounts, addresses and order history move across. Passwords often can't, so we plan a clear activation path. Returning customers should be able to sign in, see their history and buy again on day one.

How we phase a Salesforce Commerce Cloud replatform

Large catalogues need staged migration, not a single dump into Shopify. We usually phase the work like this.

1. Discovery. Catalogue, customisations, integrations, URLs and trading calendar.
2. Architecture. Store structure, markets, data ownership and the app and custom build plan.
3. Catalogue and data. Products and metafields cleaned and imported to staging in stages.
4. Build. Theme, Functions, apps and integrations come together.
5. Rehearsal. Redirects, accounts, checkout and top landing pages tested, and the cutover practised.
6. Launch and watch. Go live in an agreed trading window that avoids your peaks, then monitor closely.

We don't have a published Salesforce Commerce Cloud case study yet, so we won't pretend otherwise. The method is the one we use on every migration. On Fáilte Foods, a Magento wholesale operation moved to Shopify Plus with Business Central, and customer continuity was the baseline. See our page on moving from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify and the wider approach to Shopify migrations.

If you're planning a replatform in the next year, book a call. We'll talk through your setup and give you an honest view of the timeline.