How to Migrate Shopify to WooCommerce? (in 8 Steps)

Paras Kela

Senior Writer

How to Migrate Shopify to WooCommerce? (in 8 Steps)

Key Takeaways:

  1. WooCommerce is an open-source software that lets owners retain full control over every aspect of their online presence, from SEO to payment options.
  2. Perform a full back-up of your existing website (Shopify) and all related data before initiating any migration steps.
  3. To send traffic to WooCommerce, you need to change your domain name system (DNS) records and registrar settings.

With over 12,639 WooCommerce stores boasting more than $100,000 in revenue, it’s clear this WordPress-powered ecommerce platform has proven capabilities for scaling success. If your Shopify store has outgrown the system’s limitations or subscription fees are eating into margins, migrating to WooCommerce could be a strategic move.

Looking for eCommerce Software? Check out SoftwareSuggest’s list of the best eCommerce Software solutions.

Making the switch unlocks leveraging WordPress’ vast extension ecosystem, unlimited scalability, and avoiding recurring SaaS costs. However, re-platforming an established store is no simple undertaking. Inventory, design, historical data, and more all require careful migration planning to prevent disruptions.

This comprehensive guide will walk through migrating your Shopify store to WooCommerce in 8 essential steps. With the right preparation and these best practices, you can import Shopify products to WooCommerce smoothly and start maximizing the new platform’s advantages for your business.

Why You Should Consider Moving From Shopify To WooCommerce?

Deciding to migrate Shopify to WooCommerce involves evaluating the benefits and features that align better with your business goals. Here are some compelling reasons why you might find it worthwhile to switch to WooCommerece –

1. Complete Control Over Your Store

WooCommerce gives store owners complete autonomy over their websites. As open-source software, it can be tailored endlessly without limitations. Owners retain full control over every aspect of their online presence, from SEO to payment options.

SEO is easier since every technical element can be optimized. WordPress seamlessly integrates publishing to empower consistent, helpful content.

Numerous payment gateways are integrated, including niche options for international stores. WooCommerce Payments provides a straightforward solution while accepting all major methods directly on-site. Shoppers enjoy one-click checkout with Apple Pay for a simplified purchase experience. Merchants receive instant deposits, too, unlike Shopify’s two-day minimum wait. Complete financial control allows for maximizing profits.

2. Powerful Personalization

As open-source software, WooCommerce and WordPress can be modified indefinitely. Over 54,000 free plugins expand design and functionality options. The extension marketplace adds 300+ tools built specifically for stores.

Complex products require customizable setups. WooCommerce supports advanced features like deposits, product mixes, visual galleries, customizable checkout fields, and more. It accommodates all business models, from physical goods to downloads to services.

3. Cost Control

WooCommerce and WordPress are free, only requiring typical website fees. Savings come from avoiding unused Shopify features priced individually each month.

WooCommerce keeps more revenue since no transaction or monthly plugin fees are assessed. Savings grow considerably as a store scales up, retaining thousands otherwise paid out.

4. Unlimited Variations

Shopify limits product variations to 100 permutations, restricting stores with extensive options. WooCommerce permits unlimited variants for any business, like a shoe merchant carrying various widths, sizes, and color combinations.

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Pro-tip

Commence your migration journey by thoroughly understanding both Shopify and WooCommerce platforms. Familiarize yourself with the unique features, customization options, and data structures of each. During the migration process, meticulously map your data, ensuring a smooth transition. Consider conducting a trial migration to anticipate and address potential issues. Additionally, don't rush the process; take time to test and optimize your new WooCommerce store before going live.

Considerations Before Shopify to WooCommerce Migration

Migrating a business website between different hosting solutions can be a complex process if not planned properly. While seeking to benefit from a new platform’s features, it is important to carefully consider transition requirements first. Rushing into a migration risks disruptions, lost traffic, or other issues.

Considerations Before Shopify to WooCommerce Migration

1. Find a WordPress-Friendly Web Host

Evaluate your existing host’s compatibility with the chosen new platform beforehand. Some hosts specialize in easy migration workflows for specific software. For a smoother changeover, inquire about what migration tools or assistance they provide.

Research demand on your host for the replacement solution as well. Consider downtime needs for migration tasks that cannot run simultaneously with live site operations. Major structural changes or content reformatting may require some offline periods. Communicate any expected disruptions clearly to customers via notices. Schedule migrations during low-traffic times whenever possible to minimize impact.

Review feature comparisons between your current and prospective platforms. Determine what must be rebuilt, reformatted, or replaced between solutions. Some elements, like customized templates, may need full recreation. Document equivalent functionality changes. This prepares you to streamline or adapt transferred content accordingly.

2. Back-Up Your Store

Perform a full back-up of your existing website and all related data before initiating any migration steps. This protects your crucial business information should issues arise. Back up files, content, product information, customer records, orders, and more to external storage or a separate server location. Test restoring from the back-up to verify its completeness and accuracy.

Careful advanced planning is key to a successful platform migration that enhances your digital presence versus hindering it through disruptions. Taking the time to consider all relevant factors leads to well-managed transitions and steady business continuity.

How To Migrate From Shopify To WooCommerce (8 Steps)

Migrating an ecommerce store from Shopify to WooCommerce involves carefully moving your products, data, and design over to the new platform. While time-consuming, transitioning to open-source WooCommerce on WordPress gives merchants much more flexibility and control over their online store.

Follow this 8-step guide to successfully import Shopify products to WooCommerce while minimizing disruptions to your business –

Step 1: Set Up WordPress Site

The first step is installing WordPress, the content management system (CMS) that powers WooCommerce. There are several ways to set up WordPress, depending on your web host:

Set Up WordPress Site

1. Managed WordPress Hosts

Managed WordPress hosts like Kinsta and WPX Hosting often provide automatic WordPress installation with one-click installers. When you create a new site on these hosts, WordPress is set up instantly with optimal security configurations. This is the fastest and easiest option.

2. Hosting Control Panels

Many shared hosts provide access to control panels like cPanel. Here, you may find auto-installers like Softaculous that enable fast WordPress installation. Look for a WordPress or auto-installer section in your hosting dashboard.

3. Manual Installation

You can always download WordPress manually and install it by uploading the files to your server. While more hands-on, the famous WordPress ‘5-minute installer’ simplifies the process. Just upload the files, run the installer, and configure database settings as guided.

During installation, choose a secure admin username that is not easily guessed. Generate a strong password using a password manager. Limit admin login attempts and require two-factor authentication for added security.

Once you complete installation, WordPress provides access to the backend dashboard for managing your site. Now it’s time to add ecommerce functionality.

Step 2: Install WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that transforms the CMS into a customizable ecommerce platform. To add it:

  1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New.
  2. Search for “WooCommerce” and click Install Now on the official plugin.
  3. After installation, click Activate.

That’s all it takes to activate WooCommerce!

Install WooCommerce

However, there are additional steps you should take to optimize the plugin:

  • Install WooCommerce maintenance and security plugins to keep your store running smoothly. Useful options include Smush, WooCommerce Admin, and UpdraftPlus.
  • Remove any unnecessary default widgets from the dashboard to declutter the experience.
  • Configure WooCommerce settings under the WooCommerce menu. Change options like currency, product types enabled, and taxes.
  • Review shipping zones and methods to ensure accurate rates for customers.
  • Set up payments by adding gateways like Stripe or PayPal. Configure payment settings.
  • Connect your store to analytics tools like Google Analytics for insights.

Following WooCommerce, best practices will help you avoid issues down the road. With the plugin activated and optimized, it’s time to migrate your Shopify products over.

Step 3: Export Products from Shopify

Shopify lets you export your entire product catalog into a CSV file. This includes all product details like titles, pricing, inventory, images, and metadata.

Export Products from Shopify

To export Shopify products:

  1. Go to Products > All Products in Shopify.
  2. Click Export at the top.
  3. Select All products to export your full catalog.
  4. Choose CSV for Excel as the file format.
  5. Click Export Products.

Shopify will email you a link to download the complete product CSV file once processing is finished. The time required depends on your catalog size.

Save this exported Shopify product CSV, as you’ll import it into WooCommerce next. But first, delete any unnecessary columns in the file, like ratings, reviews, and published status. You want a clean slate in WooCommerce.

The CSV won’t contain images or other media, so be prepared to manually upload those assets to WooCommerce after importing products.

Step 4: Import Products into WooCommerce 

With your Shopify products exported, it’s time to bring them into WooCommerce. You have two options for Shopify to WooCommerce migration:

Import Products into WooCommerce

1. Manual Import

WooCommerce has a built-in “Import Products” tool that accepts CSVs. However, it only imports basic product fields, not historical data like orders or customers.

To use it:

  1. In WordPress, go to Tools > Import > WooCommerce Products (CSV).
  2. Upload your Shopify CSV file.
  3. Map data columns to appropriate WooCommerce fields.
  4. Click Import.

Check imported products to ensure critical fields like descriptions and imagery are complete. Rerun imports after adding missing data to your CSV file if needed.

The manual process works well for simple product catalogs. But if you need to migrate customers, previous orders, reviews, and other data consider using a dedicated migration service instead.

2. Migration Services

Services like Cart2Cart and LitExtension automate Shopify to WooCommerce transfers, but you will need the Shopify API key. They migrate not just inventory but all store data. You can also experience the transfer process firsthand with a free Demo Migration, providing a detailed preview of how the transfer will be executed.

After providing API access, these tools export your full Shopify store and seamlessly transfer it to WooCommerce. Data migrated may include:

  • Products, variants, inventory, tags, categories
  • Customers, customer groups, addresses
  • Orders, coupons, taxes, payment, and shipping details
  • Reviews, ratings, followers
  • Blogs, articles, comments
  • Brands, collections, channels
  • Videos, images, and other media

For complete migrations, site transfer services save huge amounts of manual work. The peace of mind is worth the cost for many store owners.

Step 5: Point Your Domain to WooCommerce

Right now, your domain still directs visitors to Shopify. To send traffic to WooCommerce, you need to change your domain name system (DNS) records and registrar settings.

Point Your Domain to WooCommerce

There are a couple of ways to update where your domain points:

1. Through Your Domain Registrar

If you registered your domain through a third party like GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc., then manage DNS settings in your registrar account. Look for DNS editing options under domain settings or advanced configuration.

Update your registrar’s nameservers to match the ones your WooCommerce web host provides. This transitions DNS control and points the domain to WooCommerce.

2. Via Web Host DNS Tools

Many managed WooCommerce hosts like Kinsta include DNS management tools right in your hosting dashboard. This enables easy domain record editing.

Change existing records to direct toward your new WooCommerce server IP addresses and nameservers. Add any required records as well.

3. Shopify Domains

If you use Shopify’s built-in domain registration, navigate to Settings > Domains in your Shopify admin. Click your domain, then choose Transfer DNS. Here, you can assign your WooCommerce nameservers.

Give your domain time to propagate after changing DNS settings. Confirm traffic is directed to WooCommerce before deleting Shopify.

Step 6: Configure WooCommerce URLs

By default, WordPress and WooCommerce use ugly URL structures with query strings like ?post_type=product.

To improve SEO and usability, you need to configure user and search-engine-friendly permalinks in WooCommerce.

Configure WooCommerce URLs

In your WordPress dashboard:

  1. Go to Settings > Permalinks.
  2. Under Product Permalinks, select your preferred URL structure.

The most common options are:

  • /shop/sample-product/ – Recommended for SEO
  • /sample-product/ – Short and clean

Avoid the default ?product=123 at all costs.

You can also customize permalink structures under Permalinks settings:

  • Category base – /product-category/shirts/
  • Tag base – /product-tag/black/

Once your permalinks are configured, resave existing content and posts if prompted. This avoids dead links from URL structure changes.

Unlike Shopify, you get total control over your WooCommerce site’s URLs for better branding and rankings. Set this up early before launching your new store.

Step 7: Tailoring Your WooCommerce Store’s Aesthetic

When transitioning from Shopify to WooCommerce, one critical aspect is revamping your online store’s design to align with your brand and provide an appealing user experience. You have two primary approaches to consider when it comes to redesigning your store: either replicate the design of your previous Shopify store or opt for a fresh WooCommerce template.

1. Recreating the Style of Your Shopify Store

Recreating the design and style of your Shopify store is an option many choose during migration. This approach aims to maintain consistency and familiarity for existing customers accustomed to your Shopify layout. By emulating the Shopify design in WooCommerce, the transition becomes smoother for your loyal clientele.

However, bear in mind that WooCommerce operates within the WordPress framework, utilizing default WordPress themes initially. Hence, replicating the exact Shopify design might require additional customization efforts to achieve the desired outcome.

2. Starting Fresh with a New WooCommerce Template

On the other hand, starting afresh with a new WooCommerce template allows for a clean slate and potentially enhanced customization. WordPress, the platform WooCommerce is built on, offers a vast array of themes and templates tailored to different business needs. Choosing a new template allows you to tap into the extensive customization options that WordPress provides.

WordPress facilitates greater customization through numerous page builder plugins compatible with WooCommerce. This WooCommerce plugin empowers you to tweak and tailor your store to your precise specifications, going beyond the constraints often experienced on Shopify.

Whether you choose to recreate the Shopify design or embrace a new WooCommerce template, both approaches are valid. Your decision should align with your brand’s vision and the enhanced customization opportunities that WordPress and WooCommerce present.

Step 8: Configuring Essential WooCommerce Settings

Beyond the visual revamp, configuring critical settings within WooCommerce is fundamental to ensure a seamless transition and a fully functional online store. Moving from Shopify involves adapting to a new system, and understanding and configuring these settings is key to achieving optimal performance.

Configuring Essential WooCommerce Settings

1. Payment and Shipping Options

WooCommerce offers a wide range of payment and shipping options, allowing you to tailor these aspects to your specific business requirements. Whether it’s integrating popular payment gateways or setting up shipping rules, WooCommerce provides the flexibility to configure these essential components.

2. Security Settings

Ensuring the security of your online store and customer data is a paramount concern. WooCommerce provides various security features and settings to safeguard your transactions and customer information. Configuring these settings is crucial to maintaining a secure online shopping environment.

3. Email Notification Options

Effective communication with customers is vital for any online business. WooCommerce enables customization of email notifications, ensuring that customers receive timely and relevant updates regarding their orders, payments, and other crucial information.

4. Product Settings

Fine-tuning product settings in WooCommerce is crucial to present your products in the best possible manner. From setting product categories and attributes to managing inventory and pricing, WooCommerce offers an intuitive interface to manage every aspect of your product listings.

5. Tax Options

Taxation is a critical aspect of any online business. WooCommerce allows you to configure tax settings based on your location and the regions you sell to. This includes setting up tax rates tax classes, and handling tax exemptions, ensuring compliance with tax regulations.

Disadvantages of Shopify

Before diving deeper into the comparison of three migration solutions to import Shopify to WooCommerce, some of you may be curious about how WooCommerce can perfectly replace Shopify. Hence, in this part, we will clarify what you need to know about Shopify’s drawbacks. Let’s check it out!

Advantages & Disadvantages of Shopify

1. Shopify Pricing 

In spite of the fact that Shopify offers separate plans for e-merchants to choose from, the price of each package is relatively costly (ranging from $29 to $299 per month). Besides that, if store owners use third-party payment processors instead of Shopify Payment itself, they need to pay a transaction fee, as in the image below. The higher the plan you select, the lower the additional expense you must spend.

Regardless of fixed monthly prices and additional expenses on every transaction, Shopify users are also suggested to purchase themes and apps. Without doing this way, your products may fail to get more potential customers due to an unattractive storefront or ineffective management system. Contrary to Shopify, WooCommerce doesn’t charge any monthly fee since it is a self-hosted solution.

However, you must buy hosting, a domain name, store templates, add some plugins and extensions, or hire technical experts to develop your site. Of course, you may not need all the features mentioned above. A firm technical base is a plus, as you can save a lot on developer fees. Apparently, the price to install and operate a WooCommerce store is much lower than that of a Shopify website.

2. SEO Friendliness

Similar to the SEO features of other platforms, Shopify allows its users to add titles, meta descriptions, and images in an easy, straightforward way. However, Shopify is not an optimal choice for store owners if they want to focus on improving their page ranking.

The bad news is that you cannot remove some strings from certain URLs. For instance, the URL address of a product page will contain ‘/products/’ by default. In addition, you are not able to make any changes to your Robots.txt file or Sitemap. This is a stumbling block for those who are serious about site optimization.

On the other hand, WooCommerce leaves Shopify miles behind when it comes to SEO features. Being a WooCommerce merchant, you can literally edit every single aspect of your SEO with some simple code lines needed. 

3. Blogging Features

Unfortunately, blogging is not the main focus of Shopify, although it does offer this feature. Therefore, this platform only gives you some basic functionality to write posts. If you expect things like blogging analytics or social bookmarking, Shopify is definitely not for you.

In contrast, WooCommerce comes with a powerful Content Management System built-in and a dedicated blogging system. You can integrate your WooCommerce store with WordPress to publish non-commercial content so your clients can find the information they want without leaving the site.

4. Customizability

Shopify is famous for being a one-stop shop that provides everything you need to create an online store quickly and easily. However, this platform limits its users to having full control over their store. The only way you can improve your website presence is to spend a significant amount of money installing add-ons from the Shopify Apps Store.

Shopify size chart apps are valuable tools for eCommerce merchants who sell products that require accurate sizing information, such as apparel, footwear, or accessories. These apps allow merchants to create and display size charts on their online stores, providing customers with essential information to make informed purchasing decisions.

Unlike its rival, WooCommerce is an open-source platform that allows users to copy and modify the source code as they wish. In other words, there are endless customization options for those with the technical foundation to create specific store themes or plugins independently.

Among all of the factors discussed above, WooCommerce turns out to be the ultimate alternative to Shopify. This self-hosted solution comes as a rescue by providing what Shopify needs to improve. Therefore, don’t hesitate to migrate to a more robust platform if your current one falls short of your expectations.

In the next paragraphs, we’ll show you the differences in 3 ways you can take into consideration when migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce. Keep reading on!

3 Methods to Move From Shopify to WooCommerce 

Regarding transferring store entities from Shopify to WooCommerce, you currently have three options to choose from. Look at our comparison below to make a proper decision for your re-platforming. But first, don’t forget to create a WooCommerce store backup data on Shopify to prevent any possible risks.

Methods to Move From Shopify to WooCommerce

1. Migrate Manually

Manual migration means exporting data from Shopify and importing this file into your newly created WooCommerce store. By doing this way, there is no need to worry about data leaking because you are in charge of the whole process. It is also free, which is suitable for those with a limited budget.

However, you may waste a lot of time and effort comparing the database structure of both platforms. This solution is even more difficult for eCommerce newbies or non-coders because they will face a high chance of unexpected errors while migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce. Please note that Shopify only allows e-merchants to export some types of store information into CSV files. As the same token, you can import Shopify products to WooCommerce.

2. Hire Professionals

Suppose you are not tech-savvy and too busy to migrate on your own; asking for help from a web agency or developer would be a decent choice. They will take care from A to Z and transfer more store entities you can’t manually do.

The professionals’ technique is identical to manual migration (export and import process). The only difference is that they are able to check the platform compatibility better. This is why the hiring fee is usually expensive (around $50 – $80 per hour).

However, not all web agencies and freelancers can guarantee that they understand the 100% data structure of 2 different platforms. Unexpected errors occur when transferring data from Shopify to WooCommerce. Thus, it takes more time to crawl and fix the technical issues, leading to a huge bill after the deal. 

3. Use an Automated Tool

The final and optimal solution is to use an automated shopping cart migration tool to import Shopify to WooCommerce switch:

  1. You can perform the full process on your own after trying the free demo to see how it would work.
  2. The migration process is cloud-based. Hence, you don’t have to keep the browser or network connection during migration.
  3. Your store entities can be placed on the new site accurately within a few minutes.

LitExtension is the world’s #1 provider of shopping cart migration services. Compared with manual migration, LitExtension can transfer almost every important data, including products, customers, orders, pages, blog posts, coupons, etc. Their service doesn’t change your Shopify store. Therefore, your old site can operate normally and receive new customers or orders. At the same time, all the data selected will be transferred flawlessly to your new WooCommerce store at a reasonable expense.

Besides basic entities, the LitExtension also provides additional options that expand the migration possibility. For example, you can choose to migrate customer passwords, SEO URLs, Product descriptions, and other custom fields as you wish.

Since the dawn of the foundation, LitExtension has successfully migrated 160,000+ stores with 98% customer satisfaction from 60,000+ customers worldwide. Surely, LitExtension is the optimal solution to grow your store on a more suitable platform. 

Conclusion

Migrating an online store from one platform to another takes time, care, and attention to detail. But with strategic planning and thorough execution of each step, it is possible to make the transition smoothly with minimal disruptions to your business operations or customer experience.

The process involves:

  • Assessing your site’s existing structure and contents.
  • Navigating technical migration workflows.
  • Rebuilding designs to leverage new capabilities.
  • Thoroughly testing all functions before launch.

Patience, testing, and refinement are crucial as you explore upgraded features and customization options.

While migrating platforms is a significant undertaking, taking the time to plan and implement the migration correctly can pay major dividends in the long run. A well-managed platform change can help scale your business more effectively, boost sales and engagement through a superior platform, and position your brand for continued growth.

With diligence and perseverance, you can successfully migrate your online store from Shopify to WooCommerce.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, there are migration tools and services that can transfer your products, orders, customers, and other data from Shopify to WooCommerce.

No, most migration tools have simple wizards and interfaces to guide you through the process without coding or technical skills. However, some assistance may still be required.

Yes, you can migrate your site to a new platform like WooCommerce without changing your domain name. Your existing URL will continue working.

No, migration tools allow you to transfer your entire customer database, including profiles, addresses, and past orders. Customers should not notice any disruption when accessing your new WooCommerce site.

The duration of the process varies and may span several hours based on the volume of your data.

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