The Shopify Plus replatforming checklist I wish I had 10 years ago

Most replatforming projects don't fail because the new platform is wrong — they fail because the cutover, redirects, integrations or change management were underestimated. After leading more than 30 Shopify Plus migrations, here is the checklist I now hand to every team on day one.

1. Lock the scope before touching code

Replatforming is not a redesign, a re-architecture and a rebrand at the same time. Pick one primary goal — usually 'feature parity + better foundations' — and defer everything else to phase two. The single biggest predictor of an on-time launch is scope discipline.

2. Map every URL before anything else

Pull every indexed URL from Google Search Console, your sitemap and your analytics. Build a spreadsheet of old → new mappings with HTTP status. This document drives your redirect plan, your QA, and your post-launch SEO monitoring.

3. Treat integrations as products

ERP, OMS, PIM, 3PL, ESP, reviews, loyalty, tax, fraud — each of these is its own mini-project with its own owner, contract and test plan. Centralize them in a queue-based middleware so a downstream outage never breaks checkout. The patterns I rely on are in designing resilient e-commerce API integrations, and they fit naturally into the complete Shopify Plus ecosystem setup.

4. Rehearse the cutover three times

• Dry run #1: data migration only, on staging
• Dry run #2: full cutover with DNS swap to a sandbox domain
• Dry run #3: timed, scripted, with rollback drill

By the time the real cutover happens, the team should be bored. Boring launches are good launches.

5. Define 'done' as 30 days of green metrics

A launch isn't successful when the new site is live. It is successful when conversion, AOV, organic traffic and support tickets are at or above baseline 30 days later. Plan the budget, the team and the on-call rotation accordingly.

Ship the boring version first. You can be clever in phase two.