Shopify migration deep dive

Shopify Migration Deep Dive

Overview

Migrate product catalogs, customers, and orders to Shopify using the GraphQL Admin API bulk mutations, CSV imports, and incremental migration patterns.

Prerequisites

• Source platform data exported (CSV, JSON, or API access)
• Shopify store with appropriate access scopes
• Scopes needed: write_products, write_customers, write_orders, write_inventory

Instructions

Step 1: Assess Migration Scope

Data Type	Shopify Import Method	Complexity
Products + variants	productSet mutation (upsert)	Low
Product images	productCreateMedia mutation	Low
Customers	Customer CSV import or customerCreate	Medium
Historical orders	draftOrderCreate + draftOrderComplete	High
Inventory levels	inventorySetQuantities mutation	Medium
Collections	collectionCreate mutation	Low
Redirects (URLs)	urlRedirectCreate mutation	Low
Metafields	Included in product/customer mutations	Medium

Step 2: Bulk Product Import with productSet

productSet is idempotent — it creates or updates based on handle, making it perfect for migrations. Handles variants, metafields, and all product attributes in a single mutation.

See Product Set Migration for the complete migration function.

Step 3: Bulk Operations for Large Imports

For importing thousands of products, use Shopify's staged uploads combined with bulk mutation to avoid rate limit issues.

See Bulk Operations Import for the staged upload and bulk mutation workflow.

Step 4: Set Inventory Levels & URL Redirects

After products are created, set inventory quantities at each location and create URL redirects to preserve SEO from the old platform.

See Inventory and Redirects for both mutation implementations.

Step 5: Post-Migration Validation

Automated validation that compares expected source counts against actual Shopify counts for products, customers, and other data types.

See Post-Migration Validation for the validation script.

Output

• Products migrated with variants, images, and metafields
• Inventory levels set at correct locations
• URL redirects preserving SEO
• Migration validated against source counts

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
TAKEN on product handle	Duplicate handle	Append suffix or use productSet for upsert
Rate limited during import	Too many sequential calls	Use bulk operations or add delays
Image upload fails	URL not publicly accessible	Use staged uploads for private images
Inventory not updating	Wrong inventoryItemId	Query variant's inventoryItem.id first

Examples

Quick Migration Status

# Count products in source vs Shopify
echo "Shopify product count:"
curl -sf -H "X-Shopify-Access-Token: $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "{ productsCount { count } }"}' \
  "https://$STORE/admin/api/${SHOPIFY_API_VERSION:-2025-04}/graphql.json" \
  | jq '.data.productsCount.count'

Resources

• productSet Mutation (Upsert)
• Bulk Operations Mutations
• Inventory Management
• URL Redirects