Migrating from Magento or WooCommerce to Medusa: guide 2026

Migrating from Magento to Medusa (or from WooCommerce to Medusa) is an architectural decision, not a theme change. You leave behind a PHP platform that gives you a complete store and move to a Node.js and TypeScript commerce engine that you expose through an API, with Sanity as the content layer. This guide is for ecommerce owners and managers who need to decide whether to make the move in 2026, what criteria to use, and in what order.

In the first part of this series we explained the security risks of PHP without overstating them. Here, we turn to the practical decision: when to migrate, when not to, what to migrate, and what to rebuild.

In this article:

• What it means to have an online store without PHP using Medusa and Sanity
• When it makes sense to migrate and when it’s better to stay
• Magento support dates and WooCommerce requirements that influence the decision
• What data gets migrated and what needs to be rebuilt
• The step-by-step process for migrating without interrupting sales

# What is a PHP-free online store with Medusa and Sanity?

It’s a store where commerce and content live in separate services. Medusa is an open-source commerce platform (MIT-licensed core) built on Node.js and PostgreSQL that manages products, carts, orders, pricing, and inventory through an API. Sanity stores enriched product pages, landing pages, and guides. The storefront, usually built with Next.js, consumes both.

Medusa documents an official integration with Sanity: products are created in Medusa, and each time one is created or updated, a process syncs it with Sanity, where the marketing team adds specifications, localized content, and copy with a live preview. The Medusa dashboard shows the sync status and lets you trigger a sync manually.

# When does it make sense to migrate from Magento to Medusa?

It makes sense when three things line up: your Magento version is nearing the end of support and the upgrade has become a major project, you’re going to rebuild the frontend anyway, and you have TypeScript expertise. If your commerce logic is also unusual and you’re struggling to express it on the platform, Medusa gives you more control.

Adobe’s lifecycle policy (updated in September 2026) is the most common trigger. Each Adobe Commerce version receives three years of standard support from its release:

Adobe clarifies that it does not patch third-party dependencies such as PHP, and that PHP 8.1 reached end of life on December 31, 2025, putting PCI compliance at risk for versions 2.4.4 through 2.4.6. In addition, starting June 1, 2027, it will suspend traffic to Cloud environments running unsupported versions. These dates apply to Adobe Commerce; if you use Magento Open Source, check the same policy.

# What about WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. For version 10.8 and later, its requirements documentation requires PHP 8.3 or later and WordPress 6.9; it still works with PHP 7.4, but warns that those versions have already reached the end of their official life. The Patchstack guide 2026 identifies 91% of vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem as being in plugins, so every extension adds maintenance overhead.

# When should you NOT migrate to Medusa?

It’s not a good fit if your team works in PHP and will continue to do so, if you depend on several commercial extensions with no equivalent, if your merchandising team runs everything from the admin panel without developers, or if the real problem is an unpatched, slow store. That can be fixed by updating and optimizing for a fraction of the cost of migrating.

As the consultancy Emyrixwarns, changing platforms just to escape technical debt is risky: debt depends on how code is maintained, not just on the platform. Medusa doesn’t eliminate security risk either; its npm ecosystem has had incidents such as Shai-Hulud, documented by CISA.

# What data should you migrate, and what needs to be rebuilt?

The data is migrated: catalog, variants, prices, images, inventory, categories, and, with more effort, customers and orders. Everything else is rebuilt: the frontend, pricing and promotion rules, payment, shipping, and invoicing integrations, and content, which moves to Sanity. Customer passwords are usually not transferred because of encryption differences.

Medusa publishes an official tutorial for migrating from Magento that reads Magento’s REST API and converts configurable products into products with variants, and their attributes into options. It also offers AI-assisted migration guides for Magento and WooCommerce with two approaches:

Medusa warns against mixing both approaches in the same store: the API importer would treat everything as new and fail because of duplicate products.

# How do you migrate from Magento or WooCommerce to Medusa step by step?

Do it in phases, keeping your current store selling until the last day: inventory what exists, define the architecture, make data migration repeatable, move content to Sanity, build the frontend, test with real data, and switch over with redirects. The key is to be able to run the import multiple times and compare counts before launch.

1. Inventory: extensions or plugins, integrations (payments, shipping, ERP, invoicing), pricing rules, organic traffic by URL, and editorial content.
2. Architecture: define what lives in Medusa, what lives in Sanity, and what lives in external services. Medusa requires Node.js v20.19+ or v22.12+ and PostgreSQL, according to its tutorial.
3. API data migration: start with products, since orders and inventory depend on them. Run the import multiple times and count everything.
4. Content in Sanity: enable product synchronization and migrate pages, blog posts, and enriched product listings.
5. Frontend: build the storefront (for example, with Medusa’s Next.js starter) and connect payments and shipping.
6. Testing: real end-to-end orders, taxes, coupons, transactional emails, and performance.
7. Launch: 301 redirects for all URLs with traffic, structured data, password reset emails, and monitoring for the first few weeks.

After the switch, an API-based store makes it easier to add capabilities like AI-powered search, agents that automate the process from order to shipment or actions executed by LLMs via MCP. To avoid losing visibility in AI search, also take care of the JSON-LD schema.

# What does the content team gain with Sanity?

It gains independence: the marketing team can edit pages, guides, and enriched product listings without touching commerce logic or depending on a developer for every change. According to Medusa’s documentation, Sanity lets you manage specifications and localized content with live preview, while prices and inventory remain in Medusa.

On security, Sanity states that it has SOC 2 Type 2 certification, Google Cloud infrastructure, encryption in transit and at rest, and backups with restoration to any point in the last 30 days. We’ll take an in-depth look at this layer in part three: secure websites without PHP with Sanity vs. WordPress.

# Frequently asked questions

# How long does it take to migrate from Magento to Medusa?

It depends on the size of the catalog, the integrations, and the redesign. Data migration is usually the most predictable part; the frontend, pricing rules, and integrations take up most of the time. An initial inventory of extensions and integrations is what makes a reliable estimate possible.

# Will I lose my SEO rankings when I migrate?

Not necessarily, if you map every URL with traffic to its new address using 301 redirects, preserve titles, meta descriptions, and structured data, and monitor Search Console after launch. The real risk is launching without a redirect map.

# Can I migrate from WooCommerce to Medusa?

Yes. Medusa offers a migration guide specifically for WooCommerce, using the API or CSV, focused on the catalog: products, variants, prices, images, inventory, and categories. Customers and orders can also be migrated with additional work.

# Is Medusa more secure than Magento or WooCommerce?

It reduces the attack surface by removing PHP and relying less on third-party plugins, but it isn’t invulnerable. Node.js and npm have their own supply chain risks, so patches, dependency audits, and monitoring are still necessary.

# Do I need Sanity if I already have Medusa?

It isn’t required, but Medusa doesn’t include an editorial CMS. If you have a blog, guides, landing pages, or content-heavy product pages, Sanity gives marketing its own editor with previews, and Medusa documents an official integration to sync products.

# Conclusion: migrate based on data, not trends

• Migrating from Magento to Medusa makes sense if your version is about to lose support, you have a redesign planned, and your team uses TypeScript.
• Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 ended standard support on 11 August 2026, and starting in June 2027, Adobe will suspend unsupported Cloud environments.
• WooCommerce 10.8 requires PHP 8.3+; 91% of WordPress vulnerabilities are in plugins, according to Patchstack.
• Data is migrated with Medusa’s official tools; the frontend, rules, and content are rebuilt, with content in Sanity.
• If your team uses PHP and the store only needs patches, upgrading is usually the better choice.

For regional context, explore our technical AI solutions for stores in Latin America. If you’d like to evaluate your case, learn about our Medusa stores service or our WordPress-to-Sanity migration.

# About the author

Arturo Sánchez Gándara is CEO of ai¹, a Guadalajara-based consultancy that designs online stores with Medusa and websites with Sanity, and helps companies adopt artificial intelligence and become visible in AI search engines.

# Referenced Sources

• Adobe: Adobe Commerce lifecycle policy
• Medusa: Magento migration tutorial
• Medusa: Migrating from Magento with the Documentation MCP
• Medusa: Migrating from WooCommerce
• Medusa: integration with Sanity
• Medusa: Official Repository
• WooCommerce: Server Requirements
• Patchstack: State of WordPress Security in 2026
• Sanity: security and compliance
• CISA: npm supply chain compromise
• Emyrix: Migration from Magento to MedusaJS