If you’ve ever tried to bulk-update products or move data between Shopify stores using the built- in CSV tools, you know the headache. File size limits, rigid formatting requirements, no Excel support, and zero ability to handle things like orders, metaobjects, or translations. It’s fine for quick edits on a small catalog, but the moment your needs grow beyond that, you’re fighting the tool more than it’s helping you.

Third-party import/export apps exist to fix exactly this. For years, the go-to choice was Matrixify, and it earned that reputation. A newer app called Altera has entered the space with a different approach, and the two are worth comparing side by side.

Here’s a side-by-side breakdown to help you decide.

Quick Comparison Table

Feature                                        Altera                                             Matrixify
Payment Terms (B2B)                 Supported                                     Not supported
Sales Channel Publishing            Supported                                      Not supported
(Collections)

Where Matrixify Still Makes Sense

Matrixify has been around for a long time, and that longevity comes with genuine advantages. If you’re migrating an entire store from WooCommerce or Magento into Shopify, Matrixify has purpose-built integrations for those specific platform-to-platform moves. Doing that work manually is a significant time sink, and it’s the primary reason agencies still reach for Matrixify during large-scale replatforming projects.

It also has a massive community of users. You’ll find no shortage of forum threads, YouTube tutorials, and agency partners who know the tool inside and out. If your workflow already revolves around Matrixify templates, there’s real value in that institutional knowledge.

Where Altera Differs

The differences start to show up once you move past the basics. Altera supports a handful of data types that Matrixify simply doesn’t touch yet: translations, locations, catalogs, metafield definitions, and metaobject definitions among them. If you sell internationally and need to bulk- manage translated product content, or if you’re running a B2B operation that relies on payment terms and store credit, Altera covers those out of the box.

The Google Workspace integration is also worth calling out. Altera connects natively to Google Drive and Google Sheets for both importing and exporting, which makes collaborative workflows much smoother. No more wrestling with the IMPORTURL() function or running into refresh limits on large spreadsheets.

For developers and agencies managing multiple stores, the CLI tool adds another layer. You can trigger imports and exports directly from a terminal, which opens the door to cron jobs, CI/CD pipelines, and other automation setups that would otherwise require custom scripting against the Shopify API.

Pricing Deserves Its Own Paragraph

Matrixify uses a tiered model that ranges from $20 per month up to $200. Each tier caps how many items you can include per file (5,000 products on Basic, 50,000 on Big), and only the

$200/mo Enterprise plan removes those limits. Altera keeps it simple: a free plan with a 100-row limit, a free developer plan for stores on unpaid Shopify plans, and a single $15/month Pro tier that unlocks unlimited rows and up to 4 concurrent jobs.

Which One Fits Your Workflow

If you’re running a large-scale migration from another ecommerce platform into Shopify, Matrixify is built for that job. Its direct platform integrations and established agency ecosystem make it the go-to for replatforming.

For ongoing store operations, Altera covers the wider surface area. Regular product and inventory updates, bulk translation management, B2B workflows like payment terms and store credit, metafield and metaobject definitions, catalog management, and per-channel publishing

controls for collections. The native Google Drive and Google Sheets integration means your team can collaborate on data in the cloud without workarounds, and the CLI opens the door to terminal-based automation and AI agent workflows through tools like Claude Code.

Both apps use the same spreadsheet format, so your existing files work in either tool without modification.