Before you pay anyone to migrate your Shopify catalog, make them promise these 17 things — in writing

I audit catalog migrations for a living. Every disaster I've seen was preventable — not by hiring better, but by agreeing in writing what "done" means before work starts.

Copy this list. Send it to whoever is doing your migration. Ask them to commit to each line — and note the italics: every promise comes with a way you can check it yourself in about two minutes, no tools, no trust required.

1. Every product made it across — none lost, none duplicated. Compare row counts in both files.
2. Every variant made it across. Pick any product, count its rows in both files.
3. No handle silently renamed (-1, -2 suffixes). Search the new file for -1, -2.
4. SKUs unchanged and unique. Pick 5 SKUs from your export, find them in the new file.
5. Prices and compare-at prices identical. Pick any product, compare both price fields.
6. Inventory identical. Same spot-check.
7. No missing titles, vendors, types, or prices. Sort each column, look for blanks at the top.
8. Images attached to the right variant, not dumped at product level. Open a product with colors; each color shows its own image.
9. Every image link loads. Click any 5 image URLs.
10. Collections intact. Pick a collection, compare its product count.
11. Custom fields (metafields) survived. Open a product that had them.
12. Every old URL redirects. Try 5 URLs from your old sitemap.
13. No garbled characters. Search the file for â€.
14. No description empty or cut short. Read 5 descriptions in both files.
15. Description formatting survived (bullets, tables). Same 5 products.
16. Option names still meaningful ("Size", not "Option1"). Open any product with options.
17. Option values mean what they meant. Compare the value lists.

Two more things worth writing down:

• What happens if a check fails — fix at no charge? partial refund? Agree now, not later.
• Anything already broken in your source data — list it upfront so nobody argues about whose fault it was.

If your provider hesitates to commit to a list like this, that hesitation is information.

(I keep a pre-filled version of this as a one-page agreement — if you want it for your project, ask.)