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WooCommerce

Migrating From Shopify to WooCommerce, and When Not To

The honest case for and against moving from Shopify to WooCommerce, and the migration steps that preserve products, customers, orders and rankings.

4 min read
WooCommerceMigrationE-commerce
766 words4 min read

Start with when not to

WooCommerce is our platform and we still tell some store owners to stay on Shopify. The migration is a real project with real risk, and it is only worth it when the reasons are specific. Stay on Shopify when:

  • The store is simple and working. Standard products, standard checkout, no unusual rules. Shopify's convenience is worth its fees for a store that does not need anything it cannot do.
  • Nobody will own the maintenance. WooCommerce is software you host and maintain. If there is no plan for updates, backups and security, Shopify's managed platform is the safer home.
  • The monthly fee is the only complaint. Shopify's subscription plus transaction fees often looks expensive next to "free" WooCommerce, but WooCommerce's hosting, plugins, payment fees and maintenance are not free. Run the full comparison before deciding on cost alone.
  • The team lives in Shopify's admin and apps. Retraining and re-integrating has a cost too.

When the move makes sense

  • Customisation Shopify will not allow. Checkout logic, pricing rules, product configurators, B2B flows that need code Shopify's platform restricts. WooCommerce is PHP; if you can describe it, it can be built.
  • Content and commerce together. A store whose blog, guides and landing pages drive its sales does better on a platform where content is first-class. WordPress is that platform.
  • Fee structure at scale. At higher volumes, Shopify's transaction fees on third-party gateways and its app subscriptions can exceed a well-run WooCommerce stack. Do the arithmetic with real numbers.
  • Ownership. You want the data, the code and the hosting in your own hands, with no platform able to change terms or remove features.
  • Integrations. An existing WordPress site, a membership area, a booking system, an ERP with a WooCommerce connector.

If at least two of those apply, the migration is worth scoping.

What has to move

Products, with variants, images, descriptions, SKUs, prices, inventory, categories, tags and metafields. Customers, with addresses and, where possible, consent flags. Orders, at least the recent history, so customers see past orders and returns can be processed. Discount codes that are still live. Content: pages, blog posts, policies. URLs, which is the SEO deliverable.

Passwords do not move. Shopify does not export them, so customers will reset on first login. Tell them in advance.

The migration steps

  1. Inventory and export. Shopify's CSV exports for products, customers and orders, plus the theme's page and blog content. Record every URL the store currently has, with its title, description and traffic from Search Console.

  2. Build the WooCommerce store on staging. Theme, payment gateway, shipping, tax, the plugins that replace the Shopify apps you actually use. Resist replacing every app; most stores use a third of what they installed.

  3. Import. WooCommerce's built-in product importer handles the product CSV with mapping; a migration tool or service handles customers and orders with their relationships intact. Verify counts: products, variants, images, customers, orders. Spot-check twenty products end to end.

  4. Map URLs. Shopify's URL patterns (/products/handle, /collections/handle) differ from WooCommerce's (/product/slug, /product-category/slug). Every old URL gets a permanent redirect to its new one. This map is written before launch and tested on staging. It is the step that decides whether rankings survive.

  5. Payments and shipping in test mode. Place orders with each gateway in sandbox. Check shipping rates for a domestic and an international address. Check tax. Check the confirmation emails arrive.

  6. Content and theme parity. Every page that existed has an equivalent. Titles and descriptions carried over. Images with alt text.

  7. Launch. Point the domain at the new host. Load the redirect map. Submit the new sitemap to Search Console. Set Shopify to redirect to the new domain if the domain changes, or close it if the domain moves. Keep the Shopify export archived.

  8. Watch. Search Console's Pages report daily for a week for 404s. Payment webhooks, since they follow a domain change. Customer emails about login.

What it costs

A straightforward store with a few hundred products: one to two weeks of work plus the WooCommerce stack's hosting and plugin costs. Stores with thousands of variants, complex apps to replace or heavy customisation: quoted after the inventory. The inventory in step one is what makes the quote fixed, and it is where we tell you if staying on Shopify is the better answer.

If you are weighing it, send the store URL and the reasons you are considering the move. The first thing you will get back is whether the reasons justify the project.

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