Migrations & Replatforming
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Common Questions
How do split shipments and partial fulfillments in historical order data migrate to Shopify's fulfillment-order model without breaking the audit trail?
Split shipments survive as fulfillment records, not as the original fulfillment orders. Shopify states plainly that fulfillment orders are created automatically when an order is created and that it is not possible to manually create fulfillment orders (per shopify.dev, September 2026). The audit trail you keep is tracking numbers and line-item quantities, not timestamps.
How do serial numbers, lot numbers, or expiration-date tracking (common in specific verticals) migrate to Shopify's inventory model from a platform with native support for them?
Shopify's inventory model tracks a quantity per variant per location and carries no lot number, batch or expiry date. Regulated verticals keep that data in an app or an ERP, which then becomes the system of record for traceability. Freshly Batch Inventory prices at $24 per month for batch tracking with FEFO rotation (Shopify App Store, September 2026).
How do we communicate a subscription-platform migration to high-LTV, long-tenured subscribers specifically, versus the general subscriber base?
High-LTV subscribers need a named-sender email before the migration, not a system notice after it. Send a personal note from a real person 10 to 14 days ahead, name the change, confirm the price and cadence are unchanged, and give a direct reply address. Reserve the generic transactional notice for the rest of the base; tenure-weighted revenue justifies the extra handling.
What questions should we ask a migration agency specifically about their subscription-migration track record before trusting them with an active subscriber base?
Ask a migration agency 3 questions: the subscriber count of their last three subscription migrations, the payment-method transfer rate achieved on each, and the name of the destination platform. Vague answers to those three are disqualifying. Agencies that have really done this will also volunteer the parallel-run length and who handled the support surge, because both are where the work actually lives.
How do customer referral-program records (who referred whom, referral rewards owed) migrate as customer metadata during a platform switch?
Referral records do not migrate to Shopify, because Shopify has no referral object to migrate them into. Who referred whom lives in the referral app, and outstanding rewards are a liability on your books, not a Shopify balance. Export the ledger before you cancel the app, then decide whether to honor, pay out or convert.
How do customer support ticket history and case notes (from the old helpdesk) get linked to migrated customer records in the new Gorgias/Zendesk-Shopify setup?
Helpdesk history links to migrated Shopify customers by email address, with phone as a fallback. Gorgias matches incoming contacts against the Shopify customer record on email, and can also match on the phone number from the default shipping address (per Gorgias docs, September 2026). A Zendesk import carries up to two years of data.