Data & Customer Migration
Move customers, orders, subscriptions and B2B accounts to Shopify without duplicates, gaps or broken billing, and plan the subscriber cutover.
Common Questions
How do I migrate an active subscription program (Recharge, Skio, or a legacy platform's native subscriptions) during a full platform replatform?
An active subscription program moves as its own project after the storefront cutover, because missed or doubled charges have no rollback. Cards saved at Stripe, Braintree or Authorize.net, and PayPal billing agreements, bill through their processor as a secondary gateway on any plan (Shopify developer docs). Moving card numbers instead needs Shopify Plus or Enterprise (Shopify Help Center, October 2026).
How do multiple simultaneous B2B catalogs (one per customer segment) migrate to Shopify's 3-catalog limit on non-Plus plans, if we exceed that number?
Per-segment business-to-business (B2B) catalogs migrate below Shopify Plus by collapsing into three price structures or fewer, not three segments. Basic, Grow and Advanced allow 3 active catalogs across all B2B markets (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). Volume tiers fit inside a catalog as price breaks, so they never add one. Past three, price an app against Plus.
What's the honest cost-benefit case for migrating from Recharge/Skio to Shopify's native Subscriptions APIs, given the 2026 Recharge-Skio acquisition uncertainty?
Migrating from Recharge or Skio to Shopify Subscriptions trades a per-transaction fee for a portal without cancellation saves (Shopify Help Center, October 2026); the Skio deal alone is no reason to move. Shopify's app is free (Shopify App Store, October 2026), so leaving Recharge saves $99 or $499 monthly plus 1.49% or 1.34% and 19¢ per transaction (Recharge pricing, October 2026). Rebuild product-page purchase options first.
How do wholesale/B2B customer net-terms payment history and credit-limit data migrate as customer metadata during a platform switch?
Credit limits migrate to Shopify as metafields on the company or company location, because Shopify's business-to-business (B2B) records have no credit-limit field (Shopify developer docs, October 2026). Standard net terms such as net 30 map natively. Payment history and aging stay in your accounting system. A metafield blocks no order, so enforcement takes an app or a custom function.
What happens to active subscription contracts' billing cycles and payment tokens when migrating subscribers between any platform and Shopify's subscription data model?
An imported subscription contract starts again at billing cycle 1 (Shopify's billing cycle guide, October 2026), bills on whatever nextBillingDate your app sets, and keeps its payment token at the issuing processor. Shopify calls nextBillingDate "independent of billing cycles" and "not managed by Shopify" (Shopify's developer reference), so nothing in Shopify catches a wrong date. Tokens bill only while that processor stays connected as a secondary gateway (Shopify Help Center).
Should we migrate to a Shopify-native subscription setup, or keep our subscription app (Recharge/Skio) completely separate from the core platform migration timeline?
Subscription billing belongs on its own timeline, not inside the core platform migration. Keep Recharge or Skio billing through the replatform; rebuild only the product-page purchase options on the new theme. Shopify recommends pausing billing in the current app while contracts and payment methods move (Shopify developer docs, October 2026), so weigh Shopify Subscriptions only after two clean billing cycles.