An e-commerce platform that's been running for years often ends up with more features than teams realize.

Quick solutions added during a busy season. Little exceptions built for just one client, then never touched again. Or copying over a price list for a big customer in the middle of a hectic quarter.

Some filter is still linked to code from an old build phase. And somewhere there’s a configurator working perfectly for that one key account.

On its own, it seems easy enough to grasp—until the word migration comes up. Suddenly, internal stakeholders start speaking up a lot more.

Sales shows how their biggest clients place orders. Customer service points out a field that was supposed to be temporary and is now a staple in their daily workflow.

The workload quickly grows.

Years of decisions won’t fit into a four-month project, especially when new requests keep popping up and nobody is sure what's actually essential for the first go-live.

So where do you start if you want your migration project to go smoothly?

And what parts end up causing the most delays?

In this blog, we’ll go over five common pitfalls we see with Magento migrations—and how to stop them from slowing you down.

Pitfall 1: Letting the scope balloon before you even get started

Most migrations quickly run into a struggle between scope, timeline, and quality.

After building a platform for five years, businesses want to bring everything with them. Solutions whipped up during rush periods, custom fixes for big clients, or logic that started as a temporary fix and ended up part of the daily operation.

Before you know it, you’ve got a list that just won’t fit into a short timeline. Still, most hope to migrate in just six months.

If the deadline stays fixed but the scope keeps growing, quality takes a hit. That’s when you start to see slow screens, error messages when updating prices, or connections with missing or wrong info because of rushed testing.

You can only get control by starting with a feature audit.

Don’t jump into building. First, figure out what’s actually used every day. Which features drive revenue. Which order flows matter for your key accounts. And which functions were quick patches that can wait for a post-launch update.

Only the must-haves stay in the scope.

Anything non-essential gets moved to after go-live. Once you’re live, you can reprioritize what your V2 really needs. This keeps the initial launch manageable and ensures your platform smoothly processes whatever your ERP sends over.

Pitfall 2: Not having a crystal-clear end goal

Migrations drag on a lot longer when it’s not clear where phase one ends.

Teams keep adding to their wish lists, partners are left waiting for decisions, and midway through, you realize expectations weren’t aligned. The schedule starts slipping, and soon no one really knows what’s supposed to be delivered.

A migration only runs smoothly when it’s clear exactly where phase one stops.

Not just in vague terms, but in checkable items: uptime under pressure, integrations that respond properly to the ERP, customer prices that match the source system, accounts that can log in without a hitch.

With that foundation in place, you can safely add more later.

Having a clear end point gives deadlines real meaning.

Partners know what to focus on, internal teams see which decisions are set in stone, and dependencies stay under control. Then you can expand—think configurator logic, AI features, extra release capacity, or brand new B2B flows.

Clarity at the start saves you from scrambling at the end.

Pitfall 3: Leaving data migration till the last minute

Data migration seems simple—until you dig deeper.

You only see the real scope when you look at all the layers.

The first layer is about access.

Email addresses are easy to move over, but passwords are encrypted and can’t always be imported one-to-one. A buyer who places major orders each year doesn’t want to see an account gone message when they visit. You need a plan for this in advance.

Then comes scale.

Many B2B shops are dealing with hundreds of thousands of customer records and catalogs approaching half a million items. Key accounts may have their own price lists, so you can quickly get into millions of records. Most companies think their data’s up-to-date—but during the migration, discover lots of gaps and inconsistencies.

The third layer is product data.

Within Magento, SKUs, attributes, and relationships all find a new place. If the mapping isn’t perfect, stock levels can be wrong, products can vanish from categories, or filter results change. URLs often change too, so pages get a different route or internal links end up in odd places.

You avoid this pitfall by starting data migration early. Decide for each customer group what gets migrated, choose how existing customers will log in for the first time, and test it with real data well before the actual launch.

That saves headaches, keeps continuity, and means far fewer customer support calls just after the switch.

Pitfall 4: Colleagues who get involved too late

In nearly every organization, a group knows the current e-commerce platform inside out.

They know which fields you can skip, the order in which tasks get done, and what quick fix will prevent an error message. For them, a new Magento setup can feel like an interruption to something that just works.

This group often joins in late.

They hold on to their current way of working, keep their cards close, and come up with feedback just before launch—when it should’ve come months earlier. This puts the schedule under pressure and means extra work just when you need to pick up the pace.

The tension fades when you involve these colleagues early on.

Meet with them in the first few weeks. Let them walk you through their daily screens and listen to where things get tricky. Those are the insights you need to set a realistic scope and avoid last-minute surprises.

Once they see their input reflected in the project, resistance drops away.

The rest of the team will naturally follow, keeping your internal continuity strong.

Pitfall 5: Ignoring risks until it’s too late

A migration involves systems that all do their own thing.

ERP handles pricing and stock. PIM sends product data. Logistics software passes along statuses. If you forget to loop in just one piece until late, problems will crop up that could have been fixed earlier.

Maybe your integration partner calculates values differently.

Or a connector requires extra checks.

Or an external system passes info to Magento in a way it can’t read.

When your timeline is already packed, there’s barely room to fix this.

The solution is mostly discipline: map out the whole chain early.

For each partner, determine what will change, what the dependencies are, and what risks you can accept. You can’t prevent every risk—but you do need to know what your limits are.

Make sure you regularly test the chain end-to-end.

Not just individual connections, but whole routes—from login to delivery.

This keeps you from discovering a week before launch that everything works separately, but not together. That’s exactly why Elgentos always does regular chain tests and quick sessions with all parties involved.

The sooner you’ve got the whole picture, the smaller your risks at the end.

Planning a migration?

A migration stays manageable when three things are clear from the start: a tight scope that keeps things moving, data migration that’s factored in from the beginning, and colleagues who share their concerns and must-haves in the first weeks.

That way, you sidestep the delays and slip-ups that tend to show up only at the very end of most projects.

Want to know how Elgentos tackles this—both technically and organizationally—in Magento migrations?

Feel free to send us a message.