Is Magento 1 still supported?

No. Magento 1 reached end of life in June 2020, so there are no official security patches, and payment providers and extension vendors have progressively dropped support. Stores still on it in 2026 carry security and PCI risk that grows each year, which is why the decision between Magento 2 and Shopify cannot be postponed indefinitely.

How much does a Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration cost?

It depends almost entirely on the extension and customization audit: how many modules must be rewritten, whether the theme is rebuilt or redesigned, how many integrations are reconnected, and data volume. Projects typically run months rather than weeks. For comparison, our Magento to Shopify migrations range from $15,000 to $50,000 or more, and a Magento 2 migration of the same store is usually in the same band or higher.

What does the Magento 2 Data Migration Tool migrate?

Settings, catalogue data, customers, orders and most configuration, in settings, data and delta modes so the store can keep trading during the project. It does not migrate themes, custom code, extensions or their data tables, or media files, which are handled separately. Every extension is a separate migration question.

Should I migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2 or to Shopify?

If most of your extensions have Shopify equivalents and your customizations are about presentation rather than core commerce logic, Shopify is usually the cheaper upgrade over five years because hosting, security and platform maintenance are included. If your store’s value sits in custom Magento modules that would take a year to replace, Magento 2 is the honest answer. The extension audit decides it.

How long does a Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration take?

Typically months, driven by the theme rebuild and extension replacement rather than the data transfer itself. The Data Migration Tool’s delta mode lets the Magento 1 store keep trading until cutover. By comparison, our Magento to Shopify migrations launch in 3–5 weeks for smaller stores and 8–12 weeks for larger ones with integrations.

Magento 1 to 2 Migration: Cost, Steps and the Shopify Option

Magento 1 reached end of life in June 2020. Stores still running it in 2026 get no security patches from Adobe, carry a growing PCI and compatibility burden, and face the same decision every year: move to Magento 2 (now Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce) or leave the Magento family for Shopify. This guide covers the Magento 2 route in detail — what the “migration” really is, what the Data Migration Tool does and does not do, the cost drivers and the steps — and then prices the Shopify alternative honestly, because we do both. If you have already decided on Shopify, the step-by-step is in how to migrate from Magento to Shopify; for the platform comparison see Adobe Commerce vs Shopify.

Magento 1 to Magento 2 Migration: Cost, Steps and the Shopify Alternative (2026)

Why it is a migration, not an upgrade

Magento 2 is a different codebase with a different architecture, database structure, theme system and extension model. Nothing from a Magento 1 store runs on it unchanged. Custom extensions must be rewritten or replaced with their Magento 2 equivalents; the theme must be rebuilt; integrations with ERP, PIM, shipping and payment providers must be reconnected against the new APIs; and the data — catalogue, customers, orders, settings — must be transferred with the Data Migration Tool and then reconciled. Treat it as a replatforming project with the advantage of familiar concepts, not as a version bump.

What the Data Migration Tool does, and what it leaves to you

Adobe’s Data Migration Tool moves settings, catalogue data, customers, orders and most configuration from Magento 1 to Magento 2 in three modes: settings, data and delta (the changes that happen after the main run, so the store can keep trading during the project). It maps the two database schemas and reports what it could not map. It does not migrate themes, custom code, extensions, media files (those are copied separately), admin users’ permissions in every case, or the data that extensions stored in their own tables. Every extension your store depends on is therefore a separate question: does a Magento 2 version exist, does it migrate its data, and what does the replacement cost.

The steps

Audit. Inventory every extension, customization, integration and theme feature. Mark each as keep, replace or drop. This list is the scope and the largest driver of cost.
Choose the edition and hosting. Magento Open Source (free licence, you host and maintain) or Adobe Commerce (licensed, more built-in features, cloud option). Magento 2 needs more server resources than Magento 1; plan hosting before the build.
Set up the Magento 2 environment. Development, staging and production, with the same PHP, database and search stack as production from day one.
Install extensions and integrations. Magento 2 versions of what you keep, replacements for what you drop, and new connectors for ERP, payments, shipping and email.
Rebuild the theme. Magento 2 themes are built differently; a Magento 1 theme is a design reference, not a starting file. Decide whether to rebuild the current design or redesign, since the cost is similar.
Run the Data Migration Tool: settings, then data. Reconcile the report line by line; fix mapping issues; migrate media; verify counts of products, customers and orders against the source.
Test. Catalogue, pricing rules, promotions, checkout with every payment and shipping method, customer accounts, integrations, performance under load, and SEO: URL structure, redirects, metadata.
Delta migration and cutover. Freeze changes on Magento 1, run delta to capture the latest orders and customers, switch DNS, monitor.
Post-launch. Fix what testing missed, re-index, watch Search Console for crawl errors and 404s, and decommission Magento 1 only after the data is confirmed complete.

What drives Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration cost

Extensions and customizations. The number that must be rewritten rather than reinstalled. Heavily customized B2B stores sit at the top of every estimate for this reason.
Theme. Rebuild or redesign, and how many custom templates and page types exist.
Integrations. ERP, PIM, warehouse, marketplaces, payment and tax providers, each reconnected and retested.
Data volume and quality. Large catalogues and long order histories take longer to migrate and reconcile; dirty Magento 1 data (duplicate SKUs, orphaned records) has to be cleaned first.
Hosting and licence. Open Source hosting and maintenance versus the Adobe Commerce licence, which is an ongoing line, not a project cost.

Because of that list, Magento 1 to Magento 2 projects are typically months of work rather than weeks, and the quote you get depends almost entirely on the audit in step 1. Ask any Magento migration service for the extension-by-extension breakdown, not a single number.

How to run the extension audit

Export the list of installed modules from the Magento 1 admin or the codebase, then classify each one in a spreadsheet with five columns: what it does for the business, whether it is still used (check the last time its feature was touched), whether a Magento 2 version exists from the same vendor, whether Magento 2 or a Shopify feature covers it natively, and the estimated cost to replace or rebuild. Most stores discover that a third of their extensions are dead weight, a third have direct equivalents, and a third are custom work that needs a decision. That last third is the whole project. Do the same for customizations in the theme and core overrides, which are easy to forget because nobody installed them from a marketplace.

Common mistakes in Magento 1 to 2 projects

Migrating dirty data. Duplicate SKUs, orphaned customers and inconsistent attributes break the Data Migration Tool run and reappear as bugs after launch. Clean first.
Rebuilding every extension because it existed, not because it was used.
Underestimating hosting. Magento 2 is heavier; a server sized for Magento 1 produces a slow store and a false conclusion that the migration failed.
Skipping the delta migration and freezing the store for days, or the opposite: forgetting the freeze and losing orders placed during cutover.
Treating SEO as a post-launch task. URL structure changes between versions; the redirect map belongs in the build phase.
Choosing the destination platform by habit rather than by the audit. The same spreadsheet prices Magento 2 and Shopify; use it for both.

The Shopify alternative, priced the same way

If you are rebuilding the theme, replacing extensions and reconnecting integrations anyway, you are doing most of the work of leaving Magento. The question becomes which platform you want to maintain for the next five years.

Project cost. Our Magento to Shopify migrations range from $15,000 to $50,000 or more depending on catalogue size and integration complexity, with smaller stores launching in 3–5 weeks and larger or enterprise stores in 8–12 weeks. A Magento 2 migration for the same store is usually in the same band or higher, because the theme and extension rebuild is the same work and the platform setup is heavier.
Running cost. Shopify bundles hosting, security, updates and scaling into the plan: Basic, Grow and Advanced for most stores, Shopify Plus from about $2,300 a month for enterprise features such as native B2B and checkout customization. Magento 2 needs hosting sized for it, ongoing patching, and a developer who knows the platform, or the Adobe Commerce licence on top.
What you give up. Magento’s deep customizability and open code. Stores with genuinely unusual catalogue logic, complex B2B pricing engines or tightly coupled custom modules sometimes cannot express that on Shopify without apps and custom development; the audit tells you whether that is you.
What you gain. No platform maintenance, the largest app and theme ecosystem, Shop Pay and a checkout you never rebuild, and a far larger pool of developers and agencies.

Our rule of thumb from doing both: if the audit shows that most extensions have Shopify equivalents and the customizations are about presentation rather than core commerce logic, Shopify is the cheaper upgrade over five years. If the store’s value sits in custom Magento modules that would take a year to replace, Magento 2 is the honest answer, and you should budget for maintaining it.

Decide with the audit, not the brochure

Run the step 1 audit before talking to anyone about price. It produces the same list whichever way you go, and it is the only document that turns “migrate Magento 1” from a fear into a plan. If you want that audit done by a team that has migrated from Magento in both directions, the Shopify migration service starts there, and we will say plainly when Magento 2 is the better fit.