How to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce

If you’re thinking about migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce, there are a number of steps you’ll want to take to ensure a smooth transition. I recently went through the process and was surprised with 1) how complex the process was and 2) how little information there was on the process. Hence this blog post – I hope it serves as a guide to anyone thinking about making the switch!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you click them and make a purchase. This is at no cost to you and I only share products that I use and love myself.

If you’re thinking about migrating your e-commerce store from Shopify to WooCommerce, follow these steps:

• Ask yourself why and be sure you have identified clear benefits before going any further.
• Do your research – what functionality does the current Shopfiy site have that has to be on the WooCommerce site. Make sure you’ve identified equivalent (or better) solutions on the WooCommerce platform for all of these things.
• Choose the right WordPress theme – the more WooCommerce-friendly the better.
• Migrate the data using an online migration program.
• Final steps before going live: add any necessary extensions/plugins to the WordPress site, run test purchases via your payment gateway to ensure all runs smoothly, set up shipping and tax settings, capture Shopfiy handles for each page/product to set up redirects.
• When you’re ready to launch the new site, change primary domain in Shopify to the .myshopify.com URL and then change the nameservers to point to your new host.
• Once site is fully propagated, active SSL certificate and set up all redirects.

For more detail on each step, read on.

Be absolutely certain you want (and need) to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce

First of all, you need to ask yourself (or your client) why you want to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce. The benefits need to be clear before moving forward. For me and my client, it was simple – scalability, functionality, ability to customize and price. Shopify is an excellent e-commerce platform and I highly recommend it when it is the right solution for what the client wants to achieve. However, I love the scalability and functionality of WordPress and WooCommerce, so I knew I could take a mediocre site on Shopify and make it awesome on WordPress. Not only that, but in the end the client’s monthly outgoings are less, they have a fully customized e-commerce site with the ability to scale and functionality out the wazoo! Interested to know more about WordPress? Check out my blog post ‘Top 7 Reasons Why WordPress Is The Best CMS’ to learn about why I believe WordPress is the best Content Management System.

What are your reasons to migrate? Is Shopify too expensive? Does it frustrate you every time there is a hidden/additional fee that crops up? Do you wish your site looked better or had more functionality? These are all the frustrations my client had with Shopify and that’s why we decided to migrate their site to WooCommerce.

Before doing anything else, do your research!

Okay, so you (and your client) have decided to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce. The decision is made, so now what do you do? In my experience, before doing anything else, you want to be clear on the necessary functionalities that you have with Shopify and how those translate to WordPress and WooCommerce. For example, what mail service do you use? USPS, UPS, FedEx? Do you print shipping labels? What about taxes (county, state, country, etc)? Do you have/need a membership site? Do you need advanced reporting? And don’t forget your payment gateways. Out of the box, most of these functionalities are free with WooCommerce, but other you might have to pay for. Hence the importance of research ahead of time – you don’t want to tell yourself (or your client) that it’ll be cheaper if you migrate to Shopify only to find that it’s more expensive because of all the WooCommerce extensions and/or additional plugins you have to buy to achieve the same level of functionality. This is more than likely not going to be the case, but definitely worth doing your homework!

Next, be sure to choose the right WordPress theme and hosting provider

One of the best things about moving from Shopify to WooCommerce is the endless amount of customization! If you like being able to change things here and add things there, WordPress is definitely the way to go! That being said, it’s important to pick a great theme (unless you want to go bold and build from scratch) and a great hosting provider. Shopify provides your hosting as part of their monthly fee, so you’ll need to purchase your own for the new WordPress site.

When deciding on which WordPress theme to use, the most important features will include being WooCommerce ready and easily customizable. I’m a huge fan of StudioPress and their Genesis Framework because it is extremely customizable, user-friendly and very light on code (so super fast)! I’ve used a number of different themes along my journey, but ever since learning the ins-and-outs of the Genesis Framework, their plethora of child themes are always on my go-to list. Plus, a lot of the Genesis child themes are WooCommerce ready, so it’s very easy to get your online store up and running. In fact, I used the Digital Pro Theme when migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce.

When deciding on which hosting provider to go with, the most important features include: regular backups and free restore services, good security monitoring, free migrations, staging sites, etc. There are two hosting providers that I recommend to all of my clients (depending on their budget and requirements). First is Flywheel, which is a complete managed WordPress host. Check out this info sheet on why I recommend managed hosting for your WordPress site(s)!. Second is Siteground and I highly recommend their GoGeek plan as it comes with staging site capabilities.

Once you’ve decided on your theme and host, next is the development phase. I build all of my website on a development environment on my local computer. My preferred dev environment is called Local by Flywheel. When I initially learned web development I used MAMP, phpMyAdmin (mysql), git and the command line to develop sites locally and migrate them to a live environment, but Local by Flywheel makes this process SO MUCH EASIER. It is literally a few clicks to be set up locally and then a few clicks to be set up live. And the best thing about Local by Flywheel….it’s absolutely FREE!

Once you’ve got your local dev environment set up with your theme installed, you’ll want to activate the WooCommerce plugin. If you’re using a Genesis theme, they offer amazing integration and setup instructions, but this is only available once you purchase a theme and are logged in. Alternatively, google your theme and WooCommerce and I’m sure you’ll find instructions to get you setup. From there, it’s time to build your site.

Once you’re in a good place with the development of the site and you’re ready to migrate the data from Shopify, you first need to move your site to a live environment. If you’re using Local by Flywheel, it’s currently a simple step to download your zipped files and database and then you’re ready to take that file to your hosting provider. If you’re using Flywheel as your hosting provider (which I highly recommend), you simply put in a site migration support ticket, upload your zipped file and they take care of the rest. The best part is that your live site will be password protected (so search engines don’t start crawling it) and on a .flywheelsites domain until you point your domain nameservers to Flywheel. If you’re hosting with Siteground (or any other host), you’ll probably want to set up a sub-domain or add-on domain until you’re ready to go live.

Migrate the data

Now it’s time to migrate the data. I used a company called Cart2Cart for the migration. They literally take a copy of all of your Shopify data (orders, products, images, descriptions, customers, categories, tags, etc.) and move it directly over to WooCommerce. If you decide to use Cart2Cart, I highly recommend you go through their demo before committing to the migration. I was very skeptical and by going through this process I was much more confident about the process and it confirmed for me this was the right way to go. NOTE: throughout this whole process, your Shopify site will remain intact and fully functioning. I wanted to be sure, so I got in touch with their tech support (which is excellent, by the way) and they confirmed this would be the case.

When I went through the migration process, my live site was password protected (as discussed above), so I had to explain this to Cart2Cart tech support and provide them with the username/password and they were able to complete the migration while maintaining the site’s privacy mode.

Migration process:

• Add your source store url (.myshoify.com)
• Get Shopify API Password
• NOTE: at this point, I highly recommend you go through their demo – simply click on ‘Try migration using Cart2Cart test store’
• Add target store URL
• Download the Connection Bridge and unzip the file
• Upload the ‘bridge2cart’ folder to the root folder of your WordPress install via FTP or your host’s file manager
• Check the connection was successful
• Carry on through the steps as instructed by Cart2Cart
• Pay for the migration
• Migrate the data

My migration took about 20 minutes to complete, but there were only 791 items to migrate (including products, customers, images, etc.). The migration time and cost depends entirely on how much data you have to transfer.

Last few steps before going live

You’re in the home stretch and almost done, but there are still a few important steps you want to go through before making your new WordPress site live.

• First of all, you’ll want to make sure all the necessary functionality from Shopify is migrated across and set up correctly. Are there any more extensions or plugins you might need to make sure the site is function as it should?
• Now is the time to set up your payment gateways (if you haven’t already) and run some test purchases. Stripe offers excellent testing features, so I highly recommend you use Stripe to check everything is working correctly.
• At this stage you’ll also want to set up your shipping and tax settings.
• Lastly, before changing the nameservers from Shopify to your new host, you’ll want to export all products to CSV file as this contains all the Shopify URL handles. Once you’ve changed the nameservers to point to your new host, you’ll want to set up redirects so all the old Shopfiy URLs redirect to your new WordPress URLs. This is important for SEO purposes and avoiding broken links.

It’s launch time

Once you’ve tested everything and you’re happy with the look and functionality of your new WordPress site, it’s time to go live. Here are the steps I took:

• Change the primary domain in Shopify to the .myshopify.com URL
• Change nameservers to point to new host
  • If you purchased your domain name from an external domain provider (i.e. godaddy, namecheap, etc.), you will need to login to their site and change the nameservers
  • If you purchased your domain name from Shopify, note that Shopify is a reseller of domain names, so you will need to login to the original domain provider’s site – when I did the migration, it was opensrs.com but be sure to check with Shopify tech support to be certain. Once you login to the domain provider’s site, you’ll then change the nameservers to point to your new host.
• Once propagation is complete, you’ll want to activate your SSL certificate (LetsEncrypt is free) and then set up your redirects using the Simple 301 Redirect plugin

I’m not going to lie – it’s a time-consuming process

As I said at the very beginning – you want to be absolutely certain of the benefits of migrating away from Shopify. It isn’t easy, so be sure you ask yourself (or your client) all the right questions and do enough research ahead of time so you are fully prepared going into this migration.

That being said, it may be difficult….but it isn’t impossible. It was worth the time (and money) for my client to switch because they wanted more functionality and the ability to scale without being hamstrung by increased monthly prices from Shopify.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you click them and make a purchase. This is at no cost to you and I only share products that I use and love myself.