Migrate from Shopify

A Shopify migration moves a store into a new Modulify site in one go. The catalog, the content, the customers and the full order history go into the site database, images and files go into the site storage, and the published storefront pages become pages of the site. This page explains how the migration works, how to run it, where each part of the store lands and what to do once it has finished. The import dialog itself is covered step by step in Import from Shopify.

Before you start

• You need the Shopify admin of the store, with permission to create apps in the organization that owns it. Shopify gives tokens only to an app created in the same organization as the store.
• Have the store address ready. It can be your own domain or the store's myshopify.com address.
• To have the published storefront pages copied as they are, the online store must not be password protected. When it is, the store data and the theme still come across, and the AI builds the pages from the theme instead, exactly as the theme has them.
• The migration only reads. Every scope it asks for is a read scope, so nothing in your store changes, and the store keeps running while you build the new site.

How the migration works

The migration runs in the background in seven parts:

1. Connect. Modulify finds the store's myshopify.com address, exchanges the Client ID and Client secret of your app for an access token, and keeps the token, the Client ID and the Client secret encrypted with your site, so the migration can refresh the token and run again.
2. Read the store data. The data is read through Shopify's Admin API. The largest parts (products, customers, orders, stock levels and collections) are requested as Shopify bulk exports, which Shopify prepares on its side. When Shopify does not start an export in time, that part is read page by page instead, so it still comes across. The live theme is read through the Admin API too: its Liquid templates, sections, snippets, settings and text, and its stylesheets, scripts, fonts and images.
3. Read the storefront. The published pages of the online store are read with the theme's stylesheets, scripts and fonts.
4. Copy images and files into the site storage, so the new site does not load them from Shopify.
5. Save the data in the site database as it was, one dataset per kind of record, with the links between records and the translations, for the AI to build the tables from.
6. Build the pages: one page per storefront page, the shared header and footer, working contact and newsletter forms, a sitemap and the store's redirects. The theme is saved next to them.
7. Save the site, together with a guide (SHOPIFY.md) and notes (.modulify/import/README.md) that tell the AI what came across.

While it runs, the site's chat shows the step it is on, and Did 5 actions when it is done. Right after, the AI builds the tables from the store data and connects the pages that show it. See How migrations work for the steps, the warnings and what the AI does next.

Run the migration

What comes across

The store data comes across as datasets, which the AI builds into tables right after the migration.

In Shopify	In Modulify
Store details: name, contact email, currency, address, time zone, languages and store metafields	Store dataset
Products with description, images and videos, options and color swatches, tags, status, SEO and metafields	Products dataset
Variants with price, compare at price, SKU, barcode, weight, cost per item, country of origin, HS code and metafields	Product variants dataset, linked to their product
Stock at each location, and the locations	Stock levels and Locations datasets
Collections with their rules, image, SEO, metafields and product order	Collections dataset, linked to their products
Pages, blogs, blog posts and blog comments	Pages, Blogs, Blog posts and Blog comments datasets
Store policies	Policies dataset
Navigation menus with their nested items	Menus dataset
URL redirects	Redirects dataset, and redirects on the new site
Files: images, videos, documents and 3D models	Files dataset, with the files copied to the site storage
Custom data (metaobjects)	One dataset per custom data type
Customers with contact details, email and SMS marketing consent, addresses, tags and notes	Customers dataset
Orders with totals before and after changes, taxes, shipping, fulfillments with tracking, refunds and transactions	Orders dataset, linked to the customer
The items of each order with quantity, price, discounts and taxes	Order items dataset, linked to the order, product and variant
Draft orders	Draft orders dataset
Discounts with their codes, rules and use	Discounts dataset
Gift cards with their balance	Gift cards dataset
Translations of products, collections, pages, blogs, blog posts, policies and custom data	Kept with those records, by language
Published storefront pages with the theme's styles, scripts and fonts	Pages of the new site
The live theme: Liquid templates, sections, snippets, settings and text	Saved in the site at .modulify/import/theme, for the AI to build pages from
The theme's stylesheets, scripts, fonts and images	Copied to public/shopify/theme/assets
Contact and newsletter forms	Working forms that save to the site database

One migration reads up to 5,000 products, and up to that many records of each other catalog and content dataset. It reads up to 10,000 customers, and up to that many orders, draft orders, blog comments and gift cards. It copies up to 300 storefront pages and up to 20,000 images and files. Anything past those limits is named in the warnings.

How the data is stored

The migration does not create tables. The store data waits in the hidden _import_rows table of the site database, one dataset per kind of record, and the AI builds the tables from it as soon as the migration finishes, as How migrations work describes. It picks the names of the tables and columns itself, and the tables show up in the CMS, where _import_rows stays hidden.

• Every record keeps its Shopify id in id, a record with a Shopify handle keeps it in slug, and data holds its fields as JSON.
• Records point at each other by Shopify id. A variant holds the id of its product, an order the id of its customer, an order item the ids of its order, product and variant, a stock level the ids of its variant and location, and a blog post the id of its blog. A collection lists the ids of its products, and its product_order field keeps the order the store showed them in.
• Money fields are numbers in the store currency, with the currency in currency. An order also keeps every amount in both the store currency and the customer's currency in totals. The store record keeps how the store writes prices in money_format and money_with_currency_format, and a variant sold by weight, volume or length keeps its unit price in unit_price and unit_price_measurement.
• A metafield that has a definition in Shopify has its own field. Every other metafield is kept in a metafields field, keyed by namespace and key.
• Rich text is HTML, and dates are in UTC. shopify_created_at and shopify_updated_at keep the dates from Shopify.
• Image and file fields hold the address of the copy in the site storage. A file that could not be copied still points to Shopify. The warnings say how many there are, the notes list them, and the AI copies them when it takes over.
• A store with more than one language keeps the translations with each record under _translations, keyed by language code and then by field, and the site's languages are declared. The AI gives the tables a column per language for them, as Multiple languages describes.

The migration also saves a guide called SHOPIFY.md at the root of the site. It lists every dataset with its row count, how the datasets link, where the copied pages, the theme and the styles live and what did not come across, and the site chat is told to read it before building on the store. You can open it like any other file.

What does not come across

Some things never leave Shopify:

• Customer passwords, saved payment methods and full gift card codes. Shopify never gives them out, so a gift card keeps only its last characters.
• The cart, the checkout, search and customer accounts, which run on Shopify itself. The copied pages show them, but they do not work until they are rebuilt.
• Shopify apps, and the data an app keeps on its own servers, such as reviews in many review apps. Apps on the storefront are not copied, because they run on Shopify.

Some parts of the store are not part of a migration yet: shipping and tax settings, store credit, returns, abandoned checkouts, customer segments, subscriptions, B2B companies and price lists. Theme app extensions, the app blocks in a theme, run on Shopify and do not come across. The copied pages, menus and product options are in the store's primary language, and only the first page of a collection or blog is copied.

After the migration

When the migration finishes, the AI takes over on its own. It reads the guide and the notes, builds the tables the store needs from the store data, connects the pages that show that data to those tables while keeping them looking the same, and checks the pages. When no storefront pages could be copied, it builds them from your theme instead, exactly as the theme has them, and it never applies a design of its own. Then it answers with what came across, including the tables it built with their row counts, and what still needs work. If you were already chatting, it gets the same details with your next message instead. From then on the chat builds on the imported store and never starts it over, and when it needs more it reads your storefront directly.

1. Read the warnings under Warnings from the import. Each one says what did not come across and, where you can fix it, how.
2. Click through the pages in the preview. The copied pages start as snapshots of the store, so a product, collection or blog page that does not read its table yet shows the store as it was.
3. Ask the chat to connect any page that still shows the store as it was, for example to have the product pages read the tables of products and variants, so a change in the CMS shows on the site.
4. Decide how you sell. The checkout stays on Shopify until you replace it: ask the chat to build a cart and checkout with a payment provider, or keep linking to your Shopify store for now.
5. Check the forms by sending a test message from the contact page.
6. Check the fonts. Theme fonts are copied with the pages and the theme, and fonts from the Shopify font library are licensed for Shopify stores, so check their license before you publish.
7. Publish the site and connect your domain. The store's redirects carry over, so old links keep working.
8. Keep your Shopify store open until your domain points to Modulify. You can uninstall the Shopify app once the migration has finished.

Troubleshooting