Moving a live store from Shopify to WooCommerce is one of the most common e-commerce projects we are asked to scope, and one of the easiest to underestimate. The products usually come across without much drama. What breaks stores is everything around the products: URLs that change shape, customer accounts that cannot carry their passwords, subscriptions tied to a payment token you do not control, gift cards nobody remembered, and an analytics setup that silently stops counting on launch day.
The short answer to the question most store owners search for: yes, you can migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce without losing sales, rankings or customers, but only if you treat it as a data and revenue project rather than a theme rebuild. That means mapping every URL, deciding in advance what happens to accounts and recurring payments, running at least two full test imports, and switching over during a planned, low-traffic window with a rollback path. This guide walks through that plan step by step, with typical costs, timelines and the trade-offs worth discussing before you commit.
At SquartUp we build and migrate WooCommerce stores for brands and, under white-label agreements, for agencies. The process below is the one we use when a store's revenue cannot take a holiday while the platform changes underneath it.
Shopify is a good platform. Many stores should stay on it. A migration is worth the effort when the platform itself has become the constraint, not when a redesign or a few apps would solve the problem. The reasons we see that usually justify the move are:
The reasons that usually do not justify it: wanting a fresh look, being frustrated with one app, or assuming WooCommerce is free. WooCommerce trades a monthly platform fee for responsibility. Someone has to own hosting, security updates, plugin compatibility, backups and performance. If you do not have that capacity in-house, budget for a development partner or a maintenance retainer from day one.
Before any timeline or quote, list every type of data in the current store and decide its fate. This table is the starting point we use in discovery.
| Data | Migrates cleanly? | What to plan for |
|---|---|---|
| Products, variants, images | Yes, with mapping | Shopify options become WooCommerce attributes; variant SKUs, weights and stock need checking. Metafields need explicit field mapping. |
| Collections | Partly | Manual collections map to categories. Automated (rule-based) collections need rebuilding as categories, tags or filtered views. |
| Customers | Yes, without passwords | Password hashes cannot be exported. Customers need a reset flow and a clear message. |
| Order history | Yes | Import as historical orders so customers see past purchases and reports stay continuous. Do not trigger emails during import. |
| Subscriptions | Hardest item | Billing tokens belong to the payment processor or subscription app. Some can be migrated with processor cooperation; often customers must re-enter cards. |
| Gift cards and store credit | Usually not directly | Full codes are often not exportable. Plan to reissue balances as new codes or store credit. |
| Reviews | Depends on the app | Most review apps offer CSV export. Keep reviewer names, dates, ratings and verified-buyer flags. |
| Pages and blog posts | Yes | Content moves easily; internal links and embedded app widgets need cleanup. |
| URLs | No, they change | Shopify's /products/, /collections/, /pages/ and /blogs/ paths need a full 301 redirect map. |
| Discount codes | Recreate | Rebuild active codes and rules; expire anything that should not survive. |
The two rows that cause the most post-launch support tickets are customers and subscriptions. Decide those first, because they shape the launch communication plan and sometimes the launch date itself.
The order matters. Each step reduces a specific risk, and skipping ahead usually means repeating work later.
Export everything you can and inventory everything you cannot. A useful audit produces:
The app list is where hidden scope lives. A store with 25 apps might need eight plugins and two small custom features. A store with five apps might rely on one that does something WooCommerce has no direct equivalent for.
With the audit in hand, make the big decisions in writing:
This is the step that protects your search rankings. Shopify uses fixed path prefixes, so the default WooCommerce structure will not match. You have two options:
Either way, build a spreadsheet with every old URL, its new URL and its traffic. Pay special attention to Shopify's nested product URLs such as /collections/shoes/products/runner, which also need to resolve. Products you are discontinuing should redirect to their closest category, not the homepage. Our guide to protecting SEO rankings during a website redesign covers the redirect and crawl checks in more detail.
Write a field-by-field map before running any import tool. Typical decisions include which Shopify options become global attributes (reusable for filtering) versus product-level attributes, where vendor and product type go, how metafields map to custom fields, how tags translate, and how image alt text carries across. Getting this right is what makes layered navigation and product filters work after launch.
Use a migration tool, a custom script against the Shopify Admin API, or a combination. Tools are quick for standard catalogs; scripts are better when you have heavy metafield use, bundles or unusual variant structures. Import into staging, then check:
Design and build the theme against real imported data rather than placeholder products. Real titles, real image ratios and real variant counts expose layout problems that dummy content hides. Configure shipping zones, tax rules and payment gateways, then test every payment method with real low-value transactions on staging or in test mode.
Work through the app list from step 1. For each item, either install and configure the chosen plugin, build the custom feature, or confirm it is no longer needed. Reconnect your email platform, analytics, ad pixels, product feeds and any ERP or inventory sync. If inventory lives in another system, test stock updates in both directions. If it applies to you, our article on ERP and e-commerce integration explains the sync patterns that keep stock accurate.
Decide and document the customer experience for each:
Wipe staging and run the complete migration again, end to end, timing each step. This rehearsal tells you how long the real cutover takes, exposes steps that only worked because of manual fixes, and gives you a checklist your team can follow under pressure. For larger catalogs, a second rehearsal is cheap insurance.
Pick a low-traffic period, avoid sale events, and follow the rehearsed checklist:
The launch is not the finish line. Watch these daily for the first two weeks, then weekly:
A small dip in organic traffic for a few weeks after a platform change is common even with good redirects. A sharp or lasting drop usually points to missing redirects, blocked crawling or changed page content, and it is fixable if caught early.
Every store is different, but most migrations fall into one of three bands. These are typical ranges for professional work, not quotes.
| Store profile | Typical timeline | Typical budget (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Small catalog (under ~500 products), theme-based design, standard payments and shipping, few apps | 3 to 5 weeks | $3,000 to $8,000 |
| Mid-size catalog (hundreds to several thousand products), custom design, reviews, email and feed integrations, order history | 6 to 10 weeks | $8,000 to $25,000 |
| Complex store: subscriptions, B2B pricing, multi-currency or multi-language, ERP or warehouse integration, custom features | 10 to 16+ weeks | $25,000 to $60,000+ |
The biggest cost drivers are not catalog size. They are custom design, the number of integrations, subscription migration, and how much app functionality has to be rebuilt as custom code. Ongoing costs to budget for after launch include hosting (typically tens to a few hundred dollars per month depending on traffic), premium plugin licences, and maintenance or a support retainer. For a quick estimate based on your own scope, try our project cost estimator.
A very small store with a simple catalog and no subscriptions can be migrated by a confident owner using an import tool, a good theme and a careful redirect spreadsheet. The risk rises quickly with order volume, integrations and recurring revenue.
Whichever route you choose, ask for the redirect plan, the data mapping document and the rollback plan before work starts. Anyone who cannot describe those three things clearly is likely to learn them on your store.
If you are an agency with clients asking to leave Shopify, you do not need an in-house WooCommerce team to say yes. A white-label partner can run discovery, data migration, development and QA under your brand while you keep the client relationship and the design direction. The key is agreeing the migration checklist, communication rules and post-launch support ownership up front. SquartUp offers this as part of our white-label WordPress and WooCommerce development service.
Print this, or paste it into your project tracker, and do not go live until every line is checked.
Not if every indexed URL redirects to an equivalent page, page content and titles stay broadly the same, and the new store is at least as fast. Expect some short-term fluctuation while search engines re-crawl. Lasting drops are almost always caused by missing redirects or significant content changes.
No. Shopify does not export password hashes, so customer accounts move without passwords. A clear launch email and a simple reset flow handle this well for most stores.
With rehearsed steps, the cutover itself usually takes a few hours, mostly spent on the final delta import, DNS changes and live test orders. The weeks of work before it are what make those hours calm.
Sometimes. You remove platform and many app fees, but add hosting, plugin licences and maintenance. For stores with high volume or heavy customisation the total is often lower or more predictable; for small, simple stores Shopify can remain the cheaper option.
A Shopify to WooCommerce migration rewards preparation: audit first, map every URL and field, rehearse the cutover, and give customers a clear path through account and subscription changes. Done that way, the switch is a planned afternoon rather than a stressful week.
SquartUp has delivered 50+ projects for 25+ clients across 12+ countries, including WooCommerce builds for brands and agencies. If you are weighing a move, tell us about your store and we will help you scope the migration, flag the risky items early and give you a realistic timeline and budget.
If you run a design or marketing agency, WooCommerce projects probably arrive faster than you can staff them. A client wants a new store, a migration from Shopi...
Read article
A multi-vendor marketplace looks, from the homepage, like a store with a wide assortment. Inside the business it is a different machine. Independent sellers lis...
Read article
Wholesale teams still win deals the old way more often than they admit: a price list emailed as a spreadsheet, a buyer who replies with quantities in the wrong...
Read articleTell us about your project. We will scope it honestly, propose a clear timeline, and show you how we have helped companies like yours ship faster.
