How to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce

You can move a store from Shopify to WooCommerce yourself. Shopify exports your products, customers and orders as CSV files. WooCommerce takes the products through its own importer, and the customers and orders through importer plugins. Two things never move: customer passwords and the design. Nearly every address on the store changes as well, so most of the work is in the rebuild and the redirects, not in the exports.

What moves and what does not

Some importers read the store through Shopify's API instead of files. WooCommerce's marketplace sells Migrate & Import Shopify to WooCommerce, a paid extension that WooCommerce says brings products, customers, orders, pages, blog posts and coupons. S2W – Import Shopify to WooCommerce, in the WordPress.org directory, brings products, variations, images and categories in its free version and the rest in its paid one. Neither moves passwords or the design. This guide follows the file route.

Before you start

• Keep the Shopify plan running. The exports and the image links depend on the store being open.
• Export everything once as a backup. Products, customers, orders and a copy of your theme. Shopify can export gift cards as a file too.
• Write down every address the store answers at. Shopify builds a sitemap at /sitemap.xml on your domain. It links to your products, collections, pages and blog posts. Add any redirects you made in Shopify's admin: they stop working when the domain leaves Shopify.
• List every app and what it does for you. Each needs a replacement or a decision to drop it.
• Note your settings. Payment methods, shipping zones and rates, tax rules, and the wording of your order emails.
• Decide on hosting and a theme. Build the new store at a temporary address, not on your live domain. How to set up a WordPress staging site explains how to keep a site private while you work on it.

Move the store

Redirect your old addresses

Search engines, bookmarks, old emails and links on other sites all point at your Shopify addresses. After the move those addresses lead nowhere unless each one is redirected to the page that replaced it. WooCommerce's documentation names broken links as a cause of lost search traffic after a move.

The last part of an address can differ too. Shopify calls it the handle and bases it on the product's title. If you edited a handle, or renamed a product during the import, the two no longer match.

Make the redirects on the new site, as permanent (301) redirects. WooCommerce's documentation points to Redirection, a free plugin in the WordPress.org directory, or to your host's own tools. Redirection adds a screen under Tools, imports redirects from a CSV, and supports regular expressions, so one rule can cover every product whose name did not change.

You can also keep product addresses as they were. Under Settings, then Permalinks, WooCommerce lets you set a custom base for products. With products as the base, a product whose slug equals its old handle keeps the address it had on Shopify. Collections, pages and blog posts still need redirects.

Check the redirects before the switch. Add an old path, such as /products/blue-t-shirt, to the temporary address and open it. It should land on the new product page in one step. The redirect checker follows an address and shows each hop. Go through the whole list again on the real domain after the switch.

Check before you switch the domain

• The number of products matches Shopify's. Prices, stock, variants and images are right on a sample of them.
• An order goes through with each payment method, and the order emails reach you and the customer.
• Shipping and tax at checkout come to what Shopify charged for the same cart.
• A test customer can ask for a new password, sign in and see their account.
• Every old address on your list redirects to the right page.
• The contact form delivers.
• The new host has a working SSL certificate for your real domain.
• Under Settings, then Reading, "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is not ticked.
• Customers and orders that arrived on Shopify since your first export have been brought across.

Then point the domain at the new host and change the store from its temporary address to the real one. How to change your WordPress URL covers that step. WooCommerce's documentation suggests closing the Shopify storefront to buyers at the same moment, so no order lands on the old store.

If you would rather hand the move over, our Shopify to WooCommerce migration service starts with a free assessment and a fixed quote in writing.

Where it goes wrong

• Passwords. Customers who try their old password are refused. Email them at launch, say the store has moved, and link to the page where they set a new one.
• Variants. Every variation row has to name its parent. Count variations after the import, not only products.
• Images that still live on Shopify. The importer copies product images. Images inside descriptions, pages and posts are links in the text. Find the ones that still point at Shopify and replace each before you close the old store.
• Missing redirects. Products get remembered. Collections, blog posts and pages get forgotten. Work from the sitemap, not from memory.
• HTTPS. Shopify says its HTTPS-only policy stays in effect on your domain for 90 days after you deactivate the store. A browser that visited before will refuse a new site without a certificate.
• Email and forms. Shopify sent your order emails for you. Now your host or a mail service does. Place an order with the payment method in its test mode, before the store opens, and read what arrives. If Shopify forwards email for your domain, arrange that somewhere else before the domain moves.
• Orders during the switch. After a DNS change some visitors still reach the old store for a while. Export orders from Shopify once more when it has gone quiet.