How to Properly Move from Shopify to WooCommerce (Easy Way)

At some point, many online businesses outgrow their eCommerce platform.

For Shopify store owners, that often means wanting more flexibility, lower costs, or greater control over their store and data.

That’s where WooCommerce comes in. The challenge is moving your products, customers, and orders without losing your search rankings along the way.

The good news? You can move your Shopify store on your own. In this guide, we’ll show you how to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce, step by step.

Choose Your Migration Method

You can migrate your Shopify store to WooCommerce in a few different ways. Take a look at a few of them.

Use WooCommerce’s Built-In CSV Importer for a Small Catalog

If your catalog is small and you just need to move your products, then simply use the built-in importer in WooCommerce.

Export a products CSV from your Shopify admin. Then go to Products » Import in your WordPress dashboard and match the columns to WooCommerce fields.

The built-in importer only brings over products, so you’ll want the free exporter below if you also need your customers and orders.

Use the Free Shopify to WooCommerce Exporter

We built a free Shopify to WooCommerce exporter to make it easy for Shopify store owners to move their products, customers, orders, and tags to WooCommerce. 

Shopify Collections don’t transfer directly. Instead, the importer creates WooCommerce categories using each product’s vendor and product type.

For example, a Shopify product with “Nike” as its vendor and “Shoes” as its product type will be assigned to two WooCommerce categories: “Nike” and “Shoes.”

The free export also leaves out pages, blog posts, product reviews, gift cards, and data from Shopify apps.

Alternatively, you can use the Migrate & Import Shopify to WooCommerce plugin that lets you move your coupons, pages, and blog posts for $79 per year.

And if you’re moving a large or complex store, you can hire one of the best WordPress migration services instead.

Pre-Migration Checklist: What to Do Before Moving from Shopify to WooCommerce

• Audit your existing Shopify store. Make a list of your products, collections, customers, orders, pages, and blog posts, and note any custom fields or features that come from apps. If your store might be offline during the move, send customers an email or add a notice to your Shopify storefront.
• Back up all your data. Even if you’re exporting everything, download a backup first. In Shopify, open Products, Customers, and Orders, click ‘Export’ for each, and save your product images. That way, you’ll have a clean copy if anything goes wrong during the import.
• Review your Shopify apps. List every app your store depends on and find the WooCommerce plugin that does the same job.
• Clean up your data and plan the new structure. Delete old products, inactive customers, and outdated orders. A smaller dataset imports faster and with fewer errors. This is also the best time to plan your new category and tag structure.
• Check your domain name ownership. Confirm you have full access to your custom domain and its DNS settings. You’ll need that access to point the domain at your new store later.

Step 1: Set Up WordPress and WooCommerce

You’ll need a hosting account and a domain name before you can install WordPress. We recommend Levamo, but you can also any other WordPress hosting providers, like Bluehost or Hostinger. 

Levamo is a managed host built for eCommerce, with LiteSpeed servers and an Enterprise Cloudflare CDN on every plan to keep your product pages and checkout fast.

Once your hosting is ready and you have installed WordPress, log into your dashboard to install and activate WooCommerce.

This will open the setup wizard. Enter your store address, industry, product types, and currency accurately, since these set your tax and shipping defaults.

Skip the payment setup for now. We’ll cover that in Step 4.

For complete setup details, see our guide on how to start an online store.

Step 2: Download Your Shopify Data

With WordPress and WooCommerce ready, the next job is getting your data out of Shopify.

Its built-in export only covers products as a CSV file. That is why we built a free exporter that also brings across your customers and orders.

Visit the Shopify to WooCommerce website, enter your store URL and email address, and then click ‘Submit’.

This takes you to your Shopify admin, where you’ll install the exporter as an app to generate the API key it needs.

Click ‘Install App’ at the bottom of the permissions screen.

The next screen lists what the tool pulls, including your products, customers, and orders. Enter the email address where you want the download link sent, then click ‘Start Export’.

Watch the progress on screen. Once it’s done, a download button appears, and the same link lands in your inbox.

You’ll get a ZIP file named after your store, like yourstore.myshopify.com.zip. Download it and keep it somewhere easy to find, because you’ll upload it in the next step.

Step 3: Import Shopify Data in WooCommerce

With the ZIP file saved, switch back to your WordPress dashboard. Install and activate the free Import Shopify To WP plugin, since that’s what runs the import.

If you haven’t done this before, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After activation, go to Tools » Shopify Importer. Click ‘Choose File’, select the ZIP from Step 2, then click ‘Upload’.

Review the product list the plugin shows you, then click ‘Start Import’.

A progress indicator tracks the import. A small catalog finishes in seconds, while hundreds of orders can take much longer.

If a Shopify customer has no email address, the importer skips that record and marks it as failed in the list. Review that list before you move on.

The plugin then suggests a few WooCommerce plugins you might want later. Click ‘Continue’ to move past this screen.

You’ll see a ‘Congratulations, your shop is now ready!’ message when it’s done. Your Shopify products are now published in your WooCommerce store.

Open Products » All Products and check a few items against your old Shopify store. Expect to reorganize your categories, since they won’t match your old collections.

Step 4: Set Up Payments in WooCommerce

Leaving Shopify Payments is what worries most store owners. You need a new way to accept payments without losing customers or paying more.

WooCommerce doesn’t process payments on its own. You’ll need to connect a payment gateway, which handles card details safely and sends the money to your account.

The quickest option is WooPayments, WooCommerce’s own gateway. It’s free to install, with no setup fee or monthly fee, and payouts appear directly in your WordPress dashboard.

If you already use Stripe, FunnelKit’s Stripe plugin is free. It supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, and buy now, pay later options like Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay.

For PayPal, Angell EYE’s PayPal for WooCommerce plugin is free and open source. Add it alongside a card gateway, since some shoppers won’t check out without a PayPal button.

Selling subscriptions needs its own plugin.

Sublium Subscriptions for WooCommerce is our pick, though its free version charges a 2.9% platform fee on top of your gateway’s rate. The free version supports installment plans, free trials, and automatic retries on failed payments.

The Pro plan starts at $99.50 per year and removes that fee while adding an analytics dashboard, retention tools, and a card updater.

Even with the Pro plan, it costs less than WooCommerce’s Subscriptions extension at $279 per year. Read our Sublium review to see how it performs in practice.

Whichever gateway you choose, WooCommerce itself never takes a percentage of the sale. You pay your gateway’s processing rate, plus any platform fee your subscription plugin charges.

Step 5: Set Up Redirects to Your New WooCommerce Site

Your store works now, but existing links still point to Shopify.

Your redirects will only start working once your domain points at your WordPress site, so move the domain over first.

Set up 301 redirects to send visitors and search engines to the matching pages on your new site. A 301 redirect tells search engines that the pages moved permanently, so the ranking signals your old URLs earned pass to the new ones.

There’s one exception. If your store used a Shopify-branded address like yourstore.myshopify.com, you can’t create redirects because you don’t own the domain.

Instead, add a link to your new store on your old Shopify pages.

Moving Your Domain from Shopify to WooCommerce

If your Shopify store used a custom domain, you can point it to WooCommerce by changing your DNS nameservers. These addresses tell the internet which server should load your domain.

Your new host will give you a pair that looks something like this.

ns1.yourhost.com
ns2.yourhost.com

If you registered your domain through Shopify, go to Online Store » Domains to update these settings.

For domains registered elsewhere, see our article on how to easily change DNS nameservers.

Update Old URLs Inside WooCommerce

Your product descriptions may still contain links to your old Shopify address. Instead of updating them one by one, install and activate the Go Live Update Urls plugin.

Back up your database before you run it. The plugin rewrites your database directly, and there is no undo.

Go to Tools » Go Live, enter your old Shopify URL and new WooCommerce domain, then click ‘Update Urls’. The plugin rewrites every matching link across your site in one pass.

Delete the plugin when you’re done because you won’t need it in the future.

Set Up Redirects for Individual Pages and Posts

Any pages or blog posts you moved manually need their own redirects.

For that, install and activate the All in One SEO for WordPress plugin. You’ll need the Pro plan, which starts at $199.50 per year, since the free version doesn’t include the Redirection Manager.

After activation, complete the setup wizard. AIOSEO needs this basic setup before its other features work.

Go to All in One SEO » Redirects and enter the old Shopify URL and the new WooCommerce URL. Set the type to ‘301 Moved Permanently’ and click ‘Add Redirect’.

Repeat this for each page and post you moved.

Step 6: Finish Setting Up Your Store

With your data imported and your links redirected, it’s time to focus on what your customers see.

Start with a free theme like Botiga, which is built specifically for WooCommerce stores. You can also check out our expert picks from the best WooCommerce themes.

If you’ve used Shopify apps before, then don’t forget to find a replacement for all those plugins. You can take a look at our best WordPress plugins guide for our handpicked recommendation. 

Shopify to WooCommerce Migration FAQs

How long does a Shopify to WooCommerce migration take?

Migration time depends on the size of your store.

Exporting and importing a small catalog takes under an hour. A store with thousands of products, customers, and orders can run for several hours.

Will I lose my SEO rankings when migrating?

You can preserve your rankings if you set up 301 redirects from every old Shopify URL to its matching WooCommerce page.

How do I move my Shopify blog posts to WordPress?

Our free exporter doesn’t move blog posts. You can copy them by hand, or use the Migrate & Import Shopify to WooCommerce plugin. 

Will my customers keep their accounts and passwords?

Your customers keep their accounts and their order history, but not their passwords.

Shopify stores passwords in an encrypted format that WooCommerce can’t read. No migration tool can carry them across.

Email your customers to let them know. Ask them to use the ‘Lost your password?‘ link the first time they log in, and WordPress will send them a reset link.

We hope this article helped you move from Shopify to WooCommerce. You may also want to see our expert picks of the best WooCommerce alternatives and our list of eCommerce maintenance tips for WordPress websites.

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