How to Migrate From Shopify to WooCommerce (Step-by-Step)

Moving an online store between platforms is a little like moving house: the furniture is the easy part — the electricity, the plumbing, and the address change are where people get stuck. Migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce is completely doable, and thousands of stores have done it, but only when the data move and the SEO move are planned together. This guide walks you through the whole process, step by step.

People rarely leave Shopify because it's a bad platform. They leave because they want to own their store outright, cut long-term costs, or build a full business website around their store. Whatever your reason, the process is the same — and the golden rule is to protect your customer data and your Google rankings before you touch anything else.

A migration is not finished when your products appear on the new store. It's finished when every old URL still works, every customer can still log in, and Google knows the store has moved.

Here's the full journey, in order: why stores move, what to back up first, how to export from Shopify, how to import into WooCommerce, how to rebuild the design, and the redirect work that protects your rankings.

Why do stores move from Shopify to WooCommerce?

The most common reasons are cost, ownership, and flexibility. A Shopify store carries a monthly subscription, plus apps that typically cost $10–$50 each per month, plus transaction fees if you use a third-party payment gateway. WooCommerce is free software; you pay for hosting, a domain, and the plugins you actually need — usually far less in year two and beyond.

Ownership matters too. On WooCommerce, you own your products, customers, orders, design, and code. You can change hosts, change developers, or add any feature without asking a platform for permission. And because WooCommerce runs on WordPress, SEO is fully under your control — a real advantage for stores that grow through organic search. If you're still deciding whether to move at all, our WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison covers the cost and ownership differences in detail.

Step 1 — Back up everything before you change anything

Shopify keeps your data safe while you're their customer, but once a migration starts you want your own independent copy of everything. In Shopify admin, go to Settings → Store data and export your products, customers, and orders. The export runs in the background and sends you a download link when it's ready.

Also download your theme files, screenshot your key pages — homepage, product pages, collections — and list your apps, so you know which features to replace. That screenshot folder becomes your design brief for the new store.

Step 2 — Export your products, customers, and orders from Shopify

Shopify lets you export three separate CSV files: one for products, one for customers, and one for orders. Product exports are the richest — they include titles, descriptions, prices, variants, inventory, and image URLs. Two things to know: images arrive as links rather than files, so your import tool needs to download them, and many stores bring over customer records but keep full order history only for recent months.

Step 3 — Import your data into WooCommerce

You have two routes. For a small store, the built-in WooCommerce CSV importer is free and fine: upload your product CSV, map the columns, and fix anything that doesn't land where you expect. For larger stores — or if you want customers and order history handled properly — a migration service like Cart2Cart or LitExtension does the whole transfer for a fee, moving products, customers, orders, and even review counts automatically.

Whichever route you choose, expect to tidy up afterwards: recreate categories, download product images into your media library, rewrite short descriptions, and check that inventory counts match Shopify's final numbers. This cleanup is where a migration actually wins or loses time.

Step 4 — Rebuild your design

Shopify themes don't carry across, so your new store needs a fresh WordPress theme. It's your chance to keep what customers already recognise — same logo, colours, and layout feel — while fixing what always annoyed you. Recreate your homepage, product pages, and cart and checkout flow, then set up your payment gateway, shipping zones, and tax rules before you think about going live.

Step 5 — The part that protects your rankings: URL mapping and 301 redirects

This is the step most store owners discover too late. Shopify URLs look like /products/example and /collections/category. WooCommerce URLs are typically /product/example and /product-category/category. If you don't redirect the old addresses, every link Google has indexed — and every link other sites have built to you — starts returning 404 errors, and your rankings fall.

Before launch, build a mapping table of old URL to new URL for every product, collection, page, and blog post. Then set up 301 redirects with a plugin like Redirection or Rank Math. A 301 tells Google and visitors that a page has permanently moved, passing on most of its ranking strength. After launch, resubmit your sitemap in Google Search Console and watch the 404 report for a few weeks.

Common pitfalls to avoid

• Forgetting redirects — the single most common reason a migration costs rankings.
• Importing customers without resetting passwords, so returning customers can't log in.
• Losing image alt text, file names, and meta descriptions that were doing SEO work.
• Going live during a busy sales period with no buffer for fixes.
• Announcing the move before the new store is fully tested.

How long will the migration take?

A small store with a few hundred products can move in a long weekend with the right tools. A store with thousands of products, hundreds of customers, and custom features needs two to four weeks. Keep both stores running through the transition, set your redirects on launch day, and give yourself at least a week of testing before you promote the new address.

Treating the migration as a project — with a backup, a clean export, a careful import, and redirects in place — turns it from a risky jump into a controlled move. When it's done, you'll own your store outright, at a lower ongoing cost, on a platform you can grow without asking permission. And if it feels bigger than your team can take on, a developer can handle it end to end.