Moving your online store from Shopify to WooCommerce involves setting up a WordPress site, transferring your product and customer data, rebuilding your store’s design, and redirecting your old URLs so you don’t lose search traffic. The process can take anywhere from a few hours for a small catalog to several weeks for a large store with thousands of products and complex integrations. Here’s how to do it step by step.
Set Up WordPress and WooCommerce First
WooCommerce is a plugin that runs on WordPress, so you need a working WordPress installation before you can do anything else. That means choosing a hosting provider, installing WordPress on your server, and then installing the WooCommerce plugin from the WordPress dashboard.
Pick a host that explicitly supports WooCommerce. Managed WooCommerce hosting plans start around $15 per month for smaller stores, while dedicated hosting for high-traffic shops can run several hundred dollars per month. Look for a provider that offers automatic backups, SSL certificates, and server environments optimized for WordPress. Once WordPress is installed, go to Plugins, search for WooCommerce, and activate it. The setup wizard will walk you through basic store settings like currency, shipping zones, and tax configuration.
Get this environment fully working before you start importing data. Configure your permalink structure (Settings → Permalinks) and make sure your site loads without errors. If you rush past this step, you’ll spend more time troubleshooting import failures later.
Choose Your Migration Method
You have three main options, and the right one depends on the size of your store, your budget, and how comfortable you are working inside WordPress.
Manual CSV Export and Import
This is free and works well for stores with a manageable product catalog. In your Shopify admin, go to Products and click Export. Shopify will generate a CSV file containing your product titles, descriptions, prices, images, variants, and inventory levels. Then, in your WordPress dashboard, navigate to WooCommerce → Products → Import. WooCommerce has a built-in CSV importer that reads your file and attempts to match Shopify’s column names to WooCommerce product fields automatically. You’ll see a column mapping screen where you can manually adjust any fields that didn’t match correctly.
The manual method works for products, but you’ll need to handle customers and orders separately. Shopify lets you export customer data as a CSV, but WooCommerce doesn’t have a native customer importer. You’ll need a free WordPress plugin like Import Export WordPress Users to bring that data in. Order history is trickier. There’s no straightforward way to import old Shopify orders into WooCommerce through CSV alone, so many store owners simply keep their Shopify account active in read-only mode for a few months to reference past orders.
Automated Migration Plugins
Tools like Cart2Cart, LitExtension, and similar services connect directly to both platforms and transfer products, customers, orders, and other data automatically. Most offer a free demo migration that moves a small sample of your data so you can verify accuracy before committing. Paid migrations typically cost between $30 and several hundred dollars depending on the number of products, customers, and order records you’re transferring. These tools save significant time and handle data types that are painful to move manually, like product reviews and order histories.
Hiring a Developer
For stores with complex setups, custom functionality, or thousands of SKUs, hiring a WooCommerce developer or agency is often worth the cost. A developer can export and migrate your data, recreate custom features, and build a completely new design tailored to your brand. Expect to pay anywhere from $500 for a straightforward migration to $5,000 or more for a full redesign with custom functionality.
Data That Won’t Transfer Automatically
No migration method, manual or automated, moves everything perfectly. Knowing what gets left behind saves you from unpleasant surprises after launch.
Customer passwords cannot be transferred. Shopify encrypts passwords in a way that WooCommerce can’t read, so every customer will need to reset their password the first time they log in. Plan to send an email explaining this before or right after you switch over.
Your store design won’t come with you. Shopify themes don’t work in WordPress. You’ll need to choose a WooCommerce-compatible WordPress theme and rebuild your homepage, navigation, and page layouts. If your Shopify store had a heavily customized theme, budget extra time here.
Blog content and pages need to be moved separately. You can copy and paste content from Shopify pages into WordPress pages, but formatting, images, and layout blocks will need manual adjustment. If you have a large blog, look into the WordPress importer tool or an RSS-based import method to speed things up.
Product reviews often require a plugin on the WooCommerce side to import. Some automated migration tools handle reviews, but if you’re migrating manually, you may need to re-enter them or use a third-party review plugin that supports CSV imports.
Apps and integrations don’t carry over. Every Shopify app you relied on (email marketing, loyalty programs, upsell tools) will need a WooCommerce equivalent. Make a list of every active Shopify app and find the corresponding WordPress plugin before you migrate, so there’s no gap in functionality at launch.
Redirect URLs to Protect Your SEO
This is the step most store owners underestimate, and it’s arguably the most important one. Shopify and WooCommerce use completely different URL structures. Shopify product pages follow the pattern /products/product-name, while WooCommerce defaults to /product/product-name. Collection pages on Shopify use /collections/collection-name, while WooCommerce uses /product-category/category-name. If you don’t set up redirects, every inbound link and search engine listing pointing to your old Shopify URLs will land on a 404 error page.
Create a spreadsheet mapping every old Shopify URL to its new WooCommerce equivalent. Then set up 301 redirects (permanent redirects) for each one. In WordPress, a plugin like Redirection makes this easy. For stores with hundreds of products, you can upload your redirect map as a CSV. Don’t skip blog post URLs, collection pages, or any pages that rank in search engines. Check Google Search Console after launch to catch any URLs you missed.
If your Shopify store used a custom domain, point that domain’s DNS records to your new WordPress hosting provider. This keeps your domain authority intact and ensures existing bookmarks and links still work.
Test Everything Before Going Live
Run your new WooCommerce store in a staging environment or keep it hidden from search engines (Settings → Reading → Discourage search engines) until you’ve verified the following:
- Product data accuracy: Spot-check prices, descriptions, images, variants, and inventory counts against your Shopify store. Pay special attention to products with multiple variants, since size and color options sometimes get scrambled during import.
- Payment processing: Place a test order using your payment gateway. WooCommerce’s WooPayments plugin charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction, similar to Shopify Payments. If you’re using Stripe, PayPal, or another gateway, make sure it’s configured and processing correctly.
- Shipping and tax calculations: Verify that shipping rates and tax rules match what you had on Shopify. WooCommerce gives you more control over these settings, but that also means more configuration.
- Email notifications: Confirm that order confirmations, shipping updates, and account creation emails are sending properly.
- Mobile experience: Load your store on a phone. WooCommerce theme quality varies widely, and a theme that looks great on desktop can be unusable on mobile.
Launch and Decommission Shopify
Once your WooCommerce store is tested and your redirects are in place, point your domain to your new host and make the site live. Monitor Google Search Console and your analytics closely for the first few weeks. Look for spikes in 404 errors, drops in organic traffic, or broken pages.
Don’t cancel your Shopify subscription immediately. Keep it active for at least 30 to 90 days so you can reference old order data, handle returns on pre-migration purchases, and catch any data you forgot to export. Shopify will let you downgrade to its cheapest plan during this transition period to minimize costs. Once you’re confident everything is running smoothly on WooCommerce, you can close the Shopify account for good.
What Migration Typically Costs
If you do everything yourself using the manual CSV method, the migration itself is free. Your ongoing costs shift from Shopify’s subscription (which ranges from $29 to $299 per month) to WordPress hosting and any paid plugins you need. WooCommerce hosting starts around $15 per month for basic plans. Additional plugins for features like subscriptions, bookings, or advanced shipping rules typically cost up to $129 per year each, though many essential plugins are free.
If you use an automated migration plugin, add $30 to $300 depending on your store’s size. Hiring a developer adds $500 to $5,000 or more. The biggest hidden cost is your time: even a straightforward migration for a small store takes a full weekend of focused work, and larger stores can take weeks of part-time effort to get right.