If you run a marketplace on Shopify using a multi-vendor marketplace app, you can move your marketplace to Sharetribe without manually recreating every user and listing.
The exact migration depends on how your Shopify marketplace and multi-vendor app are set up, but the overall process is the same: your existing marketplace data is extracted and transformed into Sharetribe’s migration format, Sharetribe validates it, and we import it into your marketplace.
What can and can’t be migrated
Sharetribe’s migration process can be used to import:
Users
Listings
User and listing images
Reviews
Relevant listing data such as descriptions, prices, stock, locations, and custom attributes
Some Stripe account information, depending on your payment setup
Your Shopify products will typically become listings in Sharetribe.
If your multi-vendor app stores information about which vendor owns each product, that relationship can also be included in the migration when the source data is available. This means vendors can be migrated as users and their listings can remain associated with them.
Some parts of your existing marketplace do not transfer directly. This includes:
User passwords
Historical Shopify orders as Sharetribe transactions
Your Shopify theme
Shopify apps
Custom Shopify functionality
Other historical or platform-specific data is not automatically transferred unless it is supported by Sharetribe’s migration format.
Migrated users will need to set a new password when they start using your Sharetribe marketplace.
What needs to be recreated in Sharetribe
Migrating your data is only one part of moving your marketplace.
Your marketplace setup needs to be configured in Sharetribe, including things like your listing structure, categories, custom fields, transaction process, and marketplace design.
Your Shopify theme, multi-vendor app, and other Shopify-specific functionality are not copied directly. Instead, you recreate the marketplace experience you need in Sharetribe and then map your existing data into that structure.
Many parts of the marketplace can be configured without coding using Sharetribe Console. If your current marketplace includes custom functionality or a highly customized user experience, you can also customize Sharetribe with code.
What does a Shopify migration involve?
The amount of work depends mainly on how your existing marketplace has been built.
Shopify can export common store data such as products and customers. Marketplace-specific information, such as vendor relationships or additional seller data, may be stored by your multi-vendor app or in other Shopify data such as metafields. The exact source depends on the app and configuration you use.
A marketplace where most of the relevant information is stored in standard Shopify data may be relatively straightforward to migrate. A marketplace that relies heavily on a multi-vendor app, custom fields, several other apps, or custom functionality will usually require more work to extract and transform the relevant data.
The migration then happens in four main steps:
Prepare your data. You or your developer export the relevant data from Shopify and your multi-vendor app and transform it into Sharetribe’s migration format.
Test the migration. You send Sharetribe an anonymized test file. We validate it and let you know if anything needs to be adjusted.
Review the result. Once the file is valid, we import it into your Sharetribe Test environment so you can confirm that the data appears as expected.
Migrate your live data. When you are ready to launch, you securely send us your production migration file and we import it into your Live environment.
Preparing the migration file is the main technical part of the process. If you are comfortable working with data and code, you can do this yourself, and AI coding tools can help with the transformation.
If you are not technical or would prefer someone else to handle the migration, you can hire a developer. You can also work with a Sharetribe Expert, which is a developer or agency vetted by Sharetribe.
Sharetribe handles the validation and import itself and works with you or your developer to resolve any issues found during testing.
How to get started
The important thing is that you do not need to manually recreate your existing users, vendors, listings, and other supported marketplace data in Sharetribe.
If you are considering moving your Shopify marketplace to Sharetribe, contact the Sharetribe team. We can answer questions about your existing setup, help you understand what can be migrated, and start the test migration process with you.
You can read the technical documentation about migrations to learn more about how to create a migration file.
