Why the PrestaShop Decision Became Urgent

PrestaShop is a capable open-source platform with a large European install base, and this is not an argument that it stopped working. It is an argument about which version you can safely run.

PrestaShop 1.7 reached official end of life at the end of 2024. Since then, major module publishers including payment and carrier providers have progressively ended support for the 1.7 branch, and PCI-certified payment modules on that branch are no longer maintained. For a merchant taking card payments, that is a compliance exposure rather than a feature gap.

The obvious answer is to upgrade in place. PrestaShop 9.0 shipped in June 2025 and 9.1 followed in March 2026, both built on a modern Symfony foundation requiring PHP 8.1 or higher (PrestaShop releases). The complication is the ecosystem. As of April 2026, industry tracking put marketplace module compatibility with version 9 at roughly a third to a half, which means a heavily extended store faces module replacement, custom rework, or both.

So the real comparison is not staying versus moving. It is a PrestaShop 9 rebuild against a Shopify migration, with similar disruption either way and a different platform to own afterwards.

Simplified ecosystem and speed of deployment

On Shopify you stop maintaining server environments, PHP versions, and security patches. That is the trade: you give up code-level control and you give up the obligation. For a team that already has a competent developer on retainer, this matters less. For one where updates happen when something breaks, it matters a great deal.

Scalability without borders

Shopify integrates natively with social channels and global marketplaces, and handles traffic spikes without the hosting planning that a self-hosted store requires around peak season. Multi-currency and market localisation are configuration rather than module stacking.

Phase 1: Strategic Planning and Data Audit

A successful migration starts well before the first line of code. Mistakes at this stage cost customer loyalty and organic traffic.

Backup and asset inventory

  • Products. Images, SKUs, variants, and meta descriptions. Check attribute counts against Shopify’s three-option limit, since PrestaShop combinations often exceed it. Variant count is rarely the constraint, as Shopify raised the ceiling to 2,048 per product in October 2025.
  • Customer base. Order history, contact details, and segmentation. Passwords cannot be transferred, so an account reactivation campaign belongs in the launch plan.
  • SEO structure. A complete list of valid indexed URLs for redirect configuration, taken from a crawl rather than the sitemap.
  • Module inventory with a decision on each. Which functions you still use, which Shopify covers natively, and which need replacement. This list is usually shorter than expected and it directly reduces the budget.

New for 2026: legacy Shopify customer accounts were deprecated on February 26, 2026, so the account model on the destination side is a decision to take before the import runs (Shopify changelog).

Selection of tools and transfer methods

Three routes, and the right one depends on how much custom logic is coming with you. Automated services such as Cart2Cart handle standard catalogue and customer transfer. Manual CSV import suits smaller catalogues where the data needs cleaning anyway. A custom API migration is the most reliable option for complex projects where specific relationships between products and orders have to be preserved.

Phase 2: Technical implementation and SEO maintenance

New store configuration and object import

  • Core settings. Currencies, tax zones, and logistics rules, including GST, HST, PST, and QST for Canadian buyers and VAT handling for EU markets.
  • Demo migration first. Transfer a limited data set and verify descriptions, prices, and order statuses render correctly before committing to the full run.
  • Full migration in the background, so the existing PrestaShop store keeps trading during the transfer.
  • Custom logic rebuilt, not moved. Anything from PrestaShop modules that changes pricing or shipping has to be built on Shopify Functions, since Shopify Scripts stopped executing on June 30, 2026.

Source on the Scripts date: Shopify developer documentation. The full pre-move sequence is in our Shopify migration checklist.

Protecting SEO rankings and setting up redirects

PrestaShop URL structures differ substantially from Shopify’s, so a full redirect map is mandatory. One correction to guidance that still circulates widely, including in earlier versions of this article: claims that a 301 preserves ninety or ninety-nine percent of SEO value are pre-2016 speculation. Google’s documentation states that permanent redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank (Google Search Central).

The risk is the redirect that does not exist. PrestaShop stores accumulate indexed URLs from friendly-URL settings, category rewrites, and module-generated pages that no sitemap lists, which is why the map must come from a full crawl of the live site. Map one hop, no chains, and benchmark rankings before the move.

Phase 3: Post-migration optimization and growth

Content audit and theme customization

Choose a block-based theme rather than porting the old design. Shopify moved most layout, section, and template work into the editor, so a configured premium theme now covers what used to require development. Check transferred image quality and that collection filters behave correctly, then install only the apps you confirmed you need in the module inventory.

Customer communication and analytics

Send a personalised email to your customer base at launch, prompting a password reset since credentials did not transfer and offering something on the first order. Enable analytics from day one so you can monitor conversion paths and bounce rates against the baseline you captured before the move.

What to check ninety days after launch

Rather than a dated snapshot that ages badly, use a fixed post-launch review. Ninety days out, run a full crawl of the new store and confirm all PrestaShop URLs are still resolving to their counterparts. Verify meta titles and image alt tags survived the migration on newly generated product and category pages. Compare organic sessions by template type, mobile conversion, and average order value against the pre-move baseline, and treat anything shorter than a quarter as measuring the recrawl rather than the migration.

Ongoing, this becomes an operations function rather than a project, which is what ongoing Shopify maintenance and support covers. Where inventory or pricing lives in an ERP, that connection is its own workstream and sits in Shopify CRM and ERP integrations.

Action plan: from planning to profit

If you are running PrestaShop 1.7, do the arithmetic honestly. Price the PrestaShop 9 upgrade including module replacement and custom rework, then price the Shopify migration, then compare what each leaves you owning for the next five years. Both are projects. Only one of them removes hosting, PHP versions, and security patching from your team’s responsibilities. Binary Future scopes and runs the move as Shopify migration services, with costs broken down in our migration cost guide, timelines in the migration timeline, and the plan question in Shopify Plus vs Shopify.