If you ever considered swapping to Rubik from LinkedOption, the good news is that the underlying data model is very similar and therefore the migration should take no more than an afternoon. The fact that both solutions use metafield based organisation and are displayed as swatches on the product page makes the process smooth. The other thing in your favour is that the AI Magic Fill feature in Rubik can generate the groups automatically from your existing product names, so in many cases you don’t have to do the hard work at all and can benefit from the improved features of the newer app within a matter of hours rather than days or weeks as you would with a traditional website rebuild.
LinkedOption by Gordon Kihn has been in the App Store since December 2022, and remains at 5.0 (excellent) with 115+ reviews. Fairly flat pricing, and the app really does work well for its intended purpose – so why would someone choose to use it? Probably one of three reasons: you want the merchant exporter to automatically group products in ways that are useful to the merchant, you like the look of the storefronts in LinkedOption better than in Export For, or you hit some theme conflict that the CSS fixes for LinkedOption but not for Export For.
This guide takes you through the entire process of migrating. Export, install, recreate, verify, and then uninstall the addin. I also included a few gotchas that I found out the hard way and wish I had known them before I started the process.
Author is founder of Rubik Combined Listings. We tried to be fair with the LinkedOption parts. Data was sourced from the Shopify App Store April 2026.
In this post
- Why merchants switch
- Pricing compared
- Step 1: Export your LinkedOption groups
- Step 2: Install Rubik
- Step 3: Rebuild groups (manual or AI Magic Fill)
- Step 4: Verify on storefront
- Step 5: Uninstall LinkedOption
- Common gotchas
- FAQ
Why merchants switch
LinkedOptionIt’s perfectly fine, but then there’s the issue of the “why would I change” bar for players. Here’s what that threshold is.
- AI Magic Fill. Rubik analyzes your catalog, finds products that look like they belong together (same base title, different color), and proposes groups. You approve. Done. LinkedOption is manual.
- AI visual assistant. Describe the swatch style you want in plain English. Rubik generates the CSS. Handy when your theme is picky.
- 70+ CSS variables. Shape, spacing, border, hover state, tooltip offset, selected border width. Per group, not just globally.
- Shadow DOM isolation. The swatches live in a shadow root so your theme’s CSS can’t break them and their CSS can’t leak into the theme. Big deal on themes with aggressive global selectors.
- 350+ themes verified. Not just Dawn. Sense, Taste, Pebble, Impact, Expanse, the whole catalog.
- Page builders. Beae, EComposer, Foxify, GemPages, Instant, PageFly, Replo. Seven supported.
Do those form the basis for a decent set of arguments? Probably not. But if you’re tireding seeing your swatches rendered differently, or if you have 400 products and the thought of having to rearrange groups manually (for Galleria styles, etc) after switching to Magento is absolutely terrible, then yes.
Pricing compared
| Tier | LinkedOption | Rubik |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 / 1 group | $0 / 5 groups, 100 AI credits |
| Starter | $9.99 / 100 groups | $10 / 100 groups, 1,000 AI credits |
| Mid | $19.99 / 500 groups | $30 / 500 groups, 5,000 AI credits |
| Top | $39.99 / 3,000 groups | $50 / 5,000 groups, 50,000 AI credits |
| Annual discount | No | 17% off with annual billing |
LinkedOption I’ll admit, on paper, LinkedOption LinkedOption is the cheaper optioin at the top tier of Rubik. However, Rubik’s top tier covers 5,000 groups and comes with AI credits. I’m less than 100 groups, so the difference in price for this option is roughly the price of one coffee per month. It’s just not worth my time or effort to try to save that much money!
Step 1: Export your LinkedOption groups
Open LinkedOption in your Shopify admin. Go to the groups list as you would normally view. Screenshot or copy and paste the group names and the product handles inside each group into a spreadsheet and set up two columns for the group name and the product handles (comma separated as needed).
I went with a spreadsheet for the first reason of having something that I could fall back on in case something went wrong, and something of a paper trail to rebuild from. I wouldn’t completely trust the uninstall to remove all working data.
Step 2: Install Rubik
Install Rubik Combined Listings from the App Store, and then go through the onboarding wizard, which will walk you through setting up your store’s installation of the plugin. You’ll select your primary product type (in most cases this is going to be ‘Color’), the type of product image swatch you wish to display to your customers, and then you’ll have the option to enable or disable the app embed within your shop and store themes. Say yes here.
IMPORTANT – PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE LINKEDOPTION UNTIL RUBIK IS VERIFIED. Running both solutions side by side until proven incorrect is best. If you remove first you will have empty product pages for some time which I believe could kill conversion.
Step 3: Rebuild groups
Two paths. Pick one based on your catalog size.
Path A: Small catalog, recreate manually
Under 30 groups? All I had to do was recreate them in Rubik. I created a new group, gave it a name, added the products and chose the swatch color for each. It only took an hour or so. Now I can just use my spreadsheet as the source of truth.
Path B: Larger catalog, use AI Magic Fill
Need help with the 30+ product groups? Open up AI Magic Fill and let Rubik scan in your products, as well as your product titles, tags, and metafields. It will give you a few suggestions on what groups your products should be in, which products it recommends to include, and why it made those recommendations. You can then go through and either approve, edit, or deny each suggestion, as opposed to manually creating the 200 groups that you would need to do otherwise.
For *HUGE* catalogs, you can use bulk grouping by title pattern. Just type a regex or prefix into Rubik and it will group everything that matches.
Step 4: Verify on storefront
Check these pages before you touch LinkedOption:
- Open three product pages from three different groups. Swatches visible?
- Click a swatch. Does it navigate to the correct product?
- Out-of-stock product: does Rubik hide it or show it struck through? (Your choice in settings.)
- Mobile: resize to a phone viewport. Swatches still readable?
- If you use a page builder (GemPages, PageFly, EComposer), test a custom product template specifically.
Both apps will try to render the swatches at the same time. This is a temporary step in the process. Because swatches in Rubik’s shadow DOM are isolated from other components, most themes will not display any interference between them.
Step 5: Uninstall LinkedOption
After using 6Once you have verified 6Rubik on at least 10 product pages, make sure to disable 6LinkedOption’s theme app embed first. Then refresh the product page to ensure the Rubik swatches are still rendering but the LinkedOption swatches are gone. Only AFTER that go to the Apps and uninstall LinkedOption. This is the reverse order in which you installed it so make sure you follow this order to avoid any issues.
After uninstall, Shopify will remove the LinkedOption’s metafields within 48 hours. No action required from you.
Common gotchas
- Hex codes. LinkedOption’s color values might not match the ones you picked for Rubik. Pin a color palette in your spreadsheet first. Copy paste from one source.
- Two embeds running. Don’t forget to disable LinkedOption’s theme app embed in Online Store > Themes > Customize > App embeds. Uninstalling the app doesn’t always remove the embed block.
- Canonical URLs. Both apps keep each product as its own URL. No canonical tricks. Your SEO stays put. See the canonical and hreflang guide.
- Cached pages. Clear your Shopify CDN cache (or just save the theme once) to force a re-render of any cached product pages.
Watch the tutorial
See the live demo store, watch the tutorial video, or read the getting started guide.
FAQ
Will my product URLs change?
Why do both apps keep individual products as separate URLs? Why did product handles disappear from the migration?
Can I run both apps at the same time during the migration?
Yes, you should. Keep using LinkedOption until all Rubiks are verified on corresponding key product pages and then de-activate app embed function before uninstalling the tool.
Does AI Magic Fill really work?
Yes if the catalog has consistent named (product name and color) otherwise you would do bulk grouping with tags or metafields.
Will I lose my SEO ranking?
No indexing problems. Neither app uses canonicals or URL rewrites so all the pages you indexed will remain indexed.
How long does the migration take?
Making a small catalog under 30 groups can take about an hour. Making a larger catalog with AI Magic Fill usually takes an afternoon.
What happens to LinkedOption’s metafields after uninstall?
All obsolete Shopify app connection records are automatically removed by Shopify after about 48 hours and don’t have to be manually deleted on the Shopify app record.
Is Rubik faster than LinkedOption on the storefront?
These are both fast. Both use metafield rendering instead of the external API. Performance-wise, render speed: Rubik 1,251 ms (trimmed mean) LinkedOption 1,263 ms. Essentially the same code.
