There is a spreadsheet somewhere in your organisation that justifies staying on Adobe Commerce. It shows the sunk cost of your current build, the projected cost of migration, and a line item for "risk" that tilts the decision toward doing nothing.
That spreadsheet is lying to you. Not deliberately. It just does not account for the costs that are about to compound.
Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 regular support ended in April 2025. Extended security support ends April 2026. Version 2.4.5 regular support ended in August 2025, with extended security support ending August 2026. If you are reading this, at least one of those deadlines has already passed.
What follows is not a sales pitch for migration. It is a cost model. By the end, you will either decide to migrate or decide to stay, but you will do it with real numbers instead of sunk-cost inertia.
Adobe Commerce end-of-life timeline
Regular support ended April 2025. Extended security ended April 2026.
Regular support ended August 2025. Extended security ends August 2026.
Average cost premium of Adobe Commerce over Shopify Plus for mid-market brands
Adobe lifecycle policy and industry TCO data, 2025-2026.
The EOL Timeline You Need to Internalise
Adobe's end-of-life policy is straightforward, but its implications are not. Here is what each phase actually means for your business:
| Version | Regular support ended | Extended security ends | Status right now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 | April 2025 | April 2026 | Fully unsupported. No security patches. |
| Adobe Commerce 2.4.5 | August 2025 | August 2026 | Extended security only. Ends this month. |
| Adobe Commerce 2.4.6+ | Active | TBD | Supported, but requires upgrade from 2.4.4/2.4.5 |
"Regular support ended" means no new features, no bug fixes, and crucially, no performance patches. "Extended security" means Adobe will issue critical security patches only. Everything else is your problem.
Once extended security ends, you are running an ecommerce platform that processes payments on software with known, unpatched vulnerabilities. Your PCI compliance auditor has opinions about this.
The Four Hidden Costs of Staying
1. The Upgrade Tax
The most common response to EOL is "we will upgrade to 2.4.6 or 2.4.7." This sounds sensible until you scope the work.
Adobe Commerce major version upgrades are not one-click operations. They require testing every custom module, every third-party extension, every theme customisation, and every integration. For a typical mid-market store with 15-30 extensions and custom ERP integration, you are looking at:
- Upgrade project cost: $40,000 to $120,000 depending on customisation complexity
- Timeline: 8 to 16 weeks including staging, testing, and cutover
- Extension compatibility: 20-40% of third-party extensions require paid upgrades or replacements
- Risk: Every upgrade carries regression risk. Custom modules that worked on 2.4.4 may behave differently on 2.4.7
Here is the uncomfortable truth: you will spend $40,000 to $120,000 to upgrade to a platform you are going to need to migrate away from eventually. This is not a capital investment. It is maintenance spend that buys you 18 to 24 months before the next upgrade cycle.
2. The Hosting Premium
Adobe Commerce Cloud hosting starts at $24,000 per year and scales to $60,000+ depending on traffic and compute requirements. Self-hosted Magento on AWS or similar infrastructure runs $12,000 to $36,000 per year when you factor in server management, CDN, SSL, monitoring, and on-call response.
Shopify Plus hosting is included in the platform fee. Zero. Your $2,300 per month Shopify Plus subscription includes global CDN, DDoS protection, 99.99% uptime SLA, automatic scaling for flash sales, and SSL. There is no DevOps team to hire, no infrastructure to manage, no 3am pager alerts when a server goes down during a promotion.
| Cost line | Adobe Commerce (self-hosted) | Adobe Commerce Cloud | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform licensing | $22,000+/yr (scales with GMV) | Included in cloud pricing | $27,600/yr ($2,300/mo) |
| Hosting/infrastructure | $12,000-$36,000/yr | $24,000-$60,000/yr | Included |
| DevOps/sysadmin | $30,000-$60,000/yr (fractional) | $10,000-$20,000/yr (reduced) | $0 |
| Security patching | $6,000-$15,000/yr | $3,000-$8,000/yr | Included |
| Annual infrastructure total | $70,000-$133,000 | $37,000-$88,000 | $27,600 |
3. The Developer Premium
Adobe Commerce development talent is expensive and getting more expensive. The Magento developer pool has been shrinking since Shopify overtook it in market share. Senior Magento developers command $150 to $250 per hour. Senior Shopify developers sit at $120 to $180 per hour, and the pool is growing.
More critically, finding an agency with deep Adobe Commerce expertise is increasingly difficult. Many former Magento agencies have pivoted to Shopify Plus as their primary platform. The ones that remain charge a premium because they can.
This is not a temporary market condition. It is structural. Adobe Commerce's market share is contracting. Fewer developers are entering the ecosystem. The cost curve only goes one direction.
4. The Opportunity Cost
This is the cost that never appears on a spreadsheet but drives the most damage. Every dollar and every hour spent maintaining, upgrading, and patching Adobe Commerce is a dollar and an hour not spent on conversion optimisation, new market expansion, B2B channel development, or customer experience improvements.
Brands on Shopify Plus report 5 to 35% conversion rate improvements after migration. Not because Shopify is magic, but because they can finally allocate their technology budget to growth instead of maintenance. The checkout is faster. The mobile experience is native. The app ecosystem lets them ship features in days instead of months.
The Real TCO Comparison
Let us put concrete numbers on this. Here is a three-year total cost of ownership for a brand doing $15M in annual online revenue:
| Cost category (3-year total) | Adobe Commerce (self-hosted) | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Platform licensing | $66,000-$90,000 | $82,800 |
| Hosting and infrastructure | $72,000-$180,000 | Included |
| DevOps and security | $108,000-$225,000 | Included |
| Version upgrades (one major) | $40,000-$120,000 | $0 (automatic) |
| Extension licensing | $18,000-$36,000 | $12,000-$24,000 |
| Ongoing development and maintenance | $120,000-$240,000 | $72,000-$144,000 |
| Transaction fees (at $15M GMV) | $0 (self-hosted) | $15,750/yr ($47,250 total) |
| 3-year total | $424,000-$891,000 | $214,050-$298,050 |
Even at the conservative end, Adobe Commerce costs 42% more over three years. At the high end, it costs nearly three times as much. And this does not account for the conversion improvements that typically follow migration.
What Migration Actually Looks Like
The migration from Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus is a well-understood process at this point. Gymshark, Culture Kings, Spanx, and hundreds of brands in the $10M to $100M range have done it. The unknowns are minimal.
Timeline and Investment
| Migration complexity | Description | Investment | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard DTC migration | Theme build, data migration, basic integrations (ERP, email, reviews), SEO preservation | $80,000-$150,000 | 12-16 weeks |
| Complex DTC + B2B | Above plus B2B channel configuration, wholesale pricing, buyer portal, advanced ERP integration | $150,000-$280,000 | 16-24 weeks |
| Enterprise multi-store | Multiple brands/regions, complex integration landscape, custom checkout logic, headless elements | $280,000-$450,000 | 24-36 weeks |
Yes, migration requires upfront investment. But compare the $80,000 to $150,000 migration cost against the $424,000 to $891,000 three-year TCO of staying on Adobe Commerce. Migration pays for itself within 12 to 18 months through reduced operational costs alone, before you count conversion improvements.
The SEO Question
Every brand considering migration worries about SEO. Justifiably. Organic search is often 30 to 50% of traffic for established ecommerce brands.
The honest answer: a well-executed migration preserves organic traffic. A poorly executed one does not. The difference is URL mapping, redirect strategy, structured data preservation, and internal link architecture. These are known problems with known solutions. We have written about the detailed migration playbook elsewhere.
The key is not treating SEO as an afterthought. It is scoped into the migration plan from day one, with baseline measurements, redirect validation, and 90-day post-migration monitoring.
The Living Ecosystem Advantage
Here is where the decision gets interesting. Migration is not just about swapping platforms. It is about choosing a different operating model for your ecommerce technology.
The Adobe Commerce model is fundamentally a project model. You pay an agency to build something. They launch it. They leave. The site begins depreciating immediately. Eighteen months later, you are back in the market for another agency to do another major upgrade or rebuild.
The living ecosystem model is the opposite. Your Shopify Plus store is continuously monitored, maintained, and improved:
- Performance monitoring: Core Web Vitals, checkout completion rates, and server response times are tracked continuously. Degradation is caught before it impacts revenue.
- Security is automatic: Shopify handles PCI compliance, SSL certificates, and security patching. You never run an unpatched version. You never fail a security audit because of infrastructure.
- Platform evolution: When Shopify ships new features (checkout extensibility, B2B capabilities, AI tools), they are evaluated and implemented as part of ongoing management. Your store evolves with the platform instead of falling behind it.
- Integration health: Every connection between Shopify and your ERP, marketing tools, and third-party services is monitored. A failed sync is caught in minutes, not discovered when a customer complains.
| Dimension | Traditional Adobe Commerce model | Sonder living ecosystem on Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Platform updates | Major upgrade project every 18-24 months. $40,000-$120,000 each time. | Automatic. Shopify handles platform updates. Feature adoption is part of ongoing management. |
| Security | Manual patching. Dedicated security team or agency retainer. PCI audit prep. | Shopify manages PCI compliance, patching, and infrastructure security automatically. |
| Performance | Degrades between rebuild cycles. Performance audits are periodic projects. | Continuously monitored. Issues caught and resolved before they impact conversions. |
| New capabilities | Requires scoping, quoting, and a new project. 4-12 week lead time. | Evaluated and implemented as part of continuous improvement. Days, not months. |
| Total annual spend | $141,000-$297,000 (infrastructure + maintenance + periodic upgrades) | $71,000-$99,000 (platform + ongoing ecosystem management) |
When NOT to Migrate
We are not going to pretend Shopify Plus is the right answer for every brand currently on Adobe Commerce. It is not. You should stay on Adobe Commerce if:
- You have deeply customised B2B workflows that require multi-level approval chains, RFQ systems, and complex requisition workflows that Shopify Plus does not natively support
- You are running a marketplace model with hundreds of independent vendors and complex commission structures. Adobe Commerce's marketplace extensions are more mature.
- You have already upgraded to 2.4.7+ and your TCO is genuinely manageable. If it is working, the migration ROI may not justify the disruption.
- You are doing $500M+ in online revenue with extreme customisation requirements that push beyond Shopify Plus's architecture. At this scale, the calculus changes.
For everyone else doing $10M to $100M on Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 or 2.4.5, the math is clear. Migration costs less than staying, delivers better performance, and eliminates the upgrade treadmill permanently.
Next Steps
If you are running Adobe Commerce and the EOL timeline is creating urgency internally, we will do two things.
First, we will audit your current Adobe Commerce setup: version, hosting, extensions, integrations, customisations, and real monthly spend. We will give you an honest TCO for staying vs. migrating, using your actual numbers.
Second, if migration makes sense, we will scope the Shopify Plus build with a realistic timeline and investment range. If it does not make sense for your specific situation, we will tell you that directly.
Either way, you will have real numbers instead of the spreadsheet that is lying to you.