Most Salesforce Commerce Cloud stores move to Shopify for the same two reasons: the licence, which is usually a share of revenue, and the cost of the specialist developers needed to change anything. The data moves well. The custom code does not move at all. If you are still deciding whether to move at all, start withSalesforce Commerce Cloud vs Shopify.
Here is the map, so you can plan the work instead of discovering it.
The map
What moves cleanly
- Products. A master product with its variation attributes becomes a Shopify product with options and variants. Check your largest products first: Shopify allows three options per product, so a product with four variation attributes needs a decision before the import.
- Customers. Names, addresses and emails move. Passwords do not, see below.
- Order history. Import it read-only, so your support team can still find last year's orders.
- URLs. Every old address gets a redirect to its new one. Commerce Cloud URLs often carry ids and locale prefixes, so build the redirect list from a crawl of the live site, not from the catalogue export.
- Inventory. Inventory lists become Shopify locations.
What changes shape
- Price books. Shopify handles prices per country with Markets, and per customer group with catalogs and price lists. Most price book setups map across. Stacked or date-driven ones need a closer look.
- Promotions. Simple discounts are built in. Anything with complex qualifying rules becomes a Shopify Function, which is code. Count your live promotions first: many stores carry dozens that nobody has used in years.
- Content slots and Page Designer. Content becomes theme sections and metaobjects that your team edits in the Shopify editor. The content moves. The layouts are rebuilt.
- Custom objects. These usually become metaobjects, Shopify's own structured content.
- Sites and locales. Several Commerce Cloud sites often become one Shopify store with Markets, or a small number of expansion stores. Decide this before anything is built, because it changes everything after it.
What stays behind
- Cartridges and ISML templates. Your storefront code does not translate. The theme is rebuilt, and any business logic inside cartridges becomes an app, a Function, or goes away.
- Scheduled jobs. Business Manager jobs become Shopify Flow automations or a small app.
- OCAPI and SCAPI integrations. Every system that talks to Commerce Cloud today, ERP, warehouse, tax, search, has to be reconnected to Shopify's APIs. This is often the largest part of the project, not the storefront.
- Einstein. There is no direct equivalent. Shopify's own Search and Discovery covers basic recommendations. Anything more is an app.
- Passwords. They are hashed and cannot move. Shoppers set a new one on first sign in. Send that email before launch, not after.
Three questions that decide the timeline
- How many integrations? List every system that reads from or writes to Commerce Cloud. Each one is its own piece of work.
- How many live promotions and price books do you actually use? The answer is usually much smaller than the number configured.
- One store or several? Settle the Markets question first.
The part worth saying plainly
A Commerce Cloud migration is mostly an integration project with a storefront on top. Anyone who quotes it without reading your cartridges and your integration list is guessing. If you are weighing the move, ask us. We will read what you have and tell you what is genuinely involved, including when the honest answer is to stay.