The short version: The products and customers come out easily; Shopify exports clean CSVs and that part is a solved problem. What does not come out easily is everything living inside your apps. Subscriptions, loyalty points, reviews, and delivery-scheduling rules each sit in a separate third-party system with its own export, its own terms, and sometimes no export at all. List your installed apps before you do anything else, because that list is both why Shopify got expensive and why leaving takes longer than a weekend. Also check your Shopify Tax enrolment: if it is filing returns for you, that has to be replaced before you cancel, not after.
More than most platforms, and this is genuinely to Shopify's credit.
That is the core of what you need: the customer list, the order history, and the product catalog. Shopify does not make leaving difficult at the data level, which is more than can be said for several competitors. Export all three while the account is fully active, since access ends with the subscription.
One caveat on product images: the CSV gives you image URLs pointing at Shopify's servers, not the files. Those URLs stop working when you cancel. Download the actual images, and prefer your originals over the served versions, since Shopify compresses on upload.
Where you land matters as much as what you carry out. If the destination is a storefront you can load during the trial window, you can verify the import before you cancel anything.
The apps, and this is the part people discover too late.
Every app you installed holds its own data in its own system. Shopify's export does not include any of it. Common examples for food businesses:
So the first task is not an export. It is: open your Shopify admin, list every installed app, and for each one write down what data it holds and how you get it out. That list, not the CSV, determines how long this takes.
The pattern worth noticing is that the apps that made Shopify workable for a local food business are the ones that make leaving hard. Shopify core does not do pickup scheduling or per-day quantity caps, so you added something that does, and now that something is a dependency.
Check this before anything else if you enrolled, because it is the one thing that has a deadline attached.
Shopify Tax calculates, and for enrolled and eligible merchants it also files and remits. Calculation is free on your first $100,000 of annual US sales and then 0.35%, capped at 99¢ per order and $5,000 a year per region; filing is charged as a flat fee per return.
If it has been filing for you, then cancelling Shopify removes a compliance process, not just a storefront. Before you go:
Be precise about what a replacement actually does, because calculating, filing, and remitting are three different jobs and most platforms only do the first. Missing a filing because you switched mid-quarter is an entirely avoidable and quite expensive way to start on a new system. Our guide to reporting your food sales taxes covers doing it yourself if that becomes the answer.
Usually cost, and specifically the shape of the cost rather than the headline.
Basic is $29 a month billed annually, $348 a year, which is not unreasonable. The problem is what a local food business has to add:
Each is an app with its own monthly fee, and the total drifts to $50 or $60 a month for a business selling twelve products locally. Our breakdown of what Shopify really costs a cottage food business works that stacking through.
The second reason is the 2% penalty for using a payment processor other than Shopify Payments. At $18,000 a year in sales that is $360, charged for nothing you receive.
And the third is simply fit. Shopify is superb at shipping parcels nationally and ordinary at "collect on Saturday from the market." A business doing the second is paying for capability it never opens. Our piece on whether you should build a Shopify store for a food business covers when the answer is genuinely yes.
This is the real risk, and it is manageable if you plan for it.
Shopify uses a fixed URL structure: `/products/your-item`, `/collections/your-category`. Your new platform will use something different. Every ranking page and every external link points at the old address.
What to do:
Step four is the one that catches people. If your store lives on a Shopify subdomain rather than a domain you own, you cannot redirect anything, and every link in every old post breaks on cancellation. If that describes you, buy your domain and move to it *before* you plan a platform switch, so the redirect is possible at all.
If you have never looked at which of your pages actually receive search traffic, do that first. Most stores find that three or four pages carry almost everything, which makes the redirect mapping a short job rather than a comprehensive one.
Nine steps, and the order matters more than the speed.
Step nine is worth being firm about. Shopify's billing is monthly or annual and cancelling early does not usually refund the remainder, so there is no financial reason to rush and one very good operational reason not to.
Step six deserves the same discipline. The temptation is to half-build the new store, switch, and finish it live, because the new platform is more interesting than the old one. That is how vendors end up taking orders on a store where three products have no photographs and the Saturday cutoff was never set. Finish it, take a real order through it yourself, and only then tell anyone it exists.
CISA's guidance for small and medium businesses is a reasonable checklist for the account-hygiene side of any migration: revoke app permissions you no longer use, and make sure the person leaving with admin access is not still holding a key.
Six things, chosen because they are the reasons you are leaving.
Question one and two are the whole point. If the new platform needs apps for the same things, you have moved sideways and will rebuild the same stack at a different price.
The hardest group to move, and worth planning for separately if you have any.
A recurring order held in a subscriptions app has three things attached: a schedule, a price the customer agreed to, and a saved payment method. The payment method never transfers. That is not a platform limitation, it is how card storage works: the token belongs to the processor and the merchant account it was created under.
So every subscriber has to actively re-subscribe on the new system, and some proportion will not. That is the real cost of leaving, and it is the reason to be honest with yourself about how many you have before deciding this is a $30-a-month saving.
What reduces the loss:
A vendor with twelve subscribers can do all of that in an afternoon and will probably keep eleven. A vendor with three hundred should treat it as a project with a real conversion rate attached, and should test the new subscription flow end to end before telling anyone it exists.
If your business is local collection at more than one place, Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually with 0% commission and 2.9% plus $0.30 processing published up front, and it handles pickup at each place you sell with its own schedule and cutoff, local delivery with a radius and a route, and sales tax calculated, filed, and remitted in all 50 states, without an app stack. The honest bounds: it does not ship nationally, it is not a website builder, there is no app ecosystem, no abandoned-cart recovery, and no bulk product import, so a large catalog goes in by hand. If you ship parcels across the country or need a specific integration, Shopify does things it does not and you should stay. You can rebuild your catalog in a trial while Shopify keeps running and compare the two on your own orders rather than on either company's pricing page.
Also worth doing while you are changing everything: confirm your business name is genuinely yours. The USPTO's trademark basics covers how to search existing marks, and a rebrand is far cheaper to discover the need for now than after new packaging.
Every platform below shows the same four commercial facts, because a table that lists one platform's transaction fee and not another's is not a comparison. "Not published" means exactly that: the company does not state it publicly.
| Platform | What you stop paying for | Subscription (annual) | Free trial | Platform fee | Card processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Plan, apps, and 2% if you are not on Shopify Payments | $29/mo Basic | 3-day trial, then $1/mo for 3 | 2% platform fee if not on Shopify Payments | from 2.9% + $0.30 processing |
| Homegrown | Flat fee, no app ecosystem to buy into | $10/mo billed annually | 7-day free trial | $0 platform fee (0% commission) | 2.9% + $0.30 processing |
| Big Cartel | Cheaper, simpler, your own processor | Platinum $12/mo ($144/yr) | 7-day free trial | $0 platform fee | Your own provider, so 2.9% + $0.30 typical |
| Square Online | Free tier, higher card rate | Free tier; paid from $29/mo per location | 30-day trial on paid plans | $0 platform fee | 3.3% + $0.30 free tier, 2.9% + $0.30 paid |
| Bake.Shop | Baker-specific, no app stack | $149/yr (= $12.42/mo) | 14-day free trial | $0 platform fee (0% commission) | 2.9% + $0.30 processing |
| Wix | Cheaper plans, no commission | Light $17/mo, Core $29/mo | No free trial | $0 platform fee | 2.9% + $0.30 processing (Amex 3.7%) |
The core data is easy: products, customers, and orders all export as clean CSVs with consent status included. What is hard is your apps, each of which holds its own data in its own system with its own export.
App data, saved customer payment methods, your theme, and your URL structure unless you set up redirects. Product image URLs also stop working, so download the actual files before you cancel.
They stop with the subscription. If Shopify has been filing and remitting for you, arrange the replacement before you cancel, confirm which periods are covered, and export your jurisdiction-level tax reports.
Not if you own the domain and set up 301 redirects from every old product URL to its new equivalent. Expect a dip of a few weeks even when done properly. If your store is on a Shopify subdomain, you cannot redirect at all.
Usually the app stack. Basic is $348 a year, but pickup scheduling, quantity caps, and delivery rules are apps, so the real total drifts to $50 or $60 a month for a business selling twelve products locally.
It applies to every order when you use a payment processor other than Shopify Payments, and is waived entirely if you use theirs. At $18,000 a year in sales that is $360 for no additional service.
Only after a full order cycle has completed on the new platform. Cancelling early rarely refunds the remainder of your term, so there is no financial reason to rush and a strong operational reason not to.
Shopify does not trap your data. Products, customers with consent status, and orders all export cleanly, which is more than several competitors manage.
The apps are the migration. Subscriptions, loyalty balances, reviews, and delivery rules each live in a separate system with its own export or none at all. List your installed apps first, because that list determines whether this takes a weekend or a month.
Two things to handle before you cancel rather than after: your Shopify Tax enrolment, if it is filing returns for you, and your redirects, which are only possible if you own the domain. Get both wrong and you will start on a new platform with a missed filing and every old link broken, which is a bad trade for saving $30 a month.
