WooCommerce to Shopify Migration: A Practical Guide for 2026

A WooCommerce to Shopify migration is usually less about the products and more about everything around them: WordPress content, plugins, subscriptions, custom fields and years of URLs that Google already knows. This guide is for the store owner or ecommerce manager deciding whether to move from WooCommerce, and then running the move without losing orders, customers or rankings.

We're a London Shopify and Shopify Plus Partner, and we've been a Shopify Partner since 2018. What follows is how we scope and run WooCommerce migrations.

Why merchants move from WooCommerce to Shopify

WooCommerce is flexible because it sits on WordPress, and you control the whole stack. That control is also the cost. You own the hosting, the caching, the security, the PHP version, and the testing every time WordPress, WooCommerce or a plugin updates.

The reasons we hear most often:

Plugin sprawl. Subscriptions, product add-ons, shipping rules, gift cards, SEO and payments each come from a different vendor. Every update is a small risk to checkout.
Maintenance time. Someone has to apply updates, test them and fix what breaks. For many teams that is an agency retainer that pays for upkeep rather than growth.
Performance under load. A sale or a press mention can slow a WooCommerce site down if hosting and caching aren't tuned for it. On Shopify, hosting and checkout scale are Shopify's job.
Security and compliance. On WooCommerce you secure the server, WordPress and every plugin. Shopify runs and secures the platform and checkout for you.

None of this means WooCommerce is broken. It means the time your team spends keeping it running could go into selling instead.

What moves from WooCommerce to Shopify and what doesn't

Most WooCommerce data has a clear Shopify destination. The details depend on your plugins, so check this list against your own store.

Simple and variable products: move. Attributes become options, and variations become variants with SKUs, prices, stock and images. Shopify allows up to 2,048 variants and three options per product. Stores that use four or more attributes for variations need a plan before import.
Grouped and external products: move with mapping, usually to a bundles app or a product with a link.
Product categories: become collections. Product tags can drive automated collections and filters.
Custom fields: product meta and ACF fields map to Shopify metafields or metaobjects.
Customers and addresses: move, along with marketing consent.
Customer passwords: don't move. They are stored as one-way hashes, so customers activate their Shopify accounts or sign in with a one-time code.
Order history: moves through an import tool or the API, imported without sending emails, taking payments or changing stock.
Coupons: rebuilt as Shopify discounts and tested against the new checkout.
Subscriptions: move to a Shopify subscription app. Whether saved payment details transfer depends on your payment gateway.
Gift cards and store credit: balances are reconciled and recreated. Codes from gift card plugins may need to be re-issued.
Reviews: export them and import into the review app you choose.
WordPress posts and pages: move to a Shopify blog and pages. Layouts are rebuilt in the theme.
SEO titles and descriptions from Yoast or Rank Math: move to Shopify's SEO fields.
Custom PHP and plugin logic: doesn't move. Each piece needs a Shopify feature, an app or a custom build.

WooCommerce has a built-in product CSV exporter, under Products, Export. It handles simple and variable products well. It does not export full order history, so orders need a migration app, an export plugin or the WooCommerce REST API.

Pre-migration checklist

Before anything moves, get answers to these. Each one changes scope.

A list of every active plugin, what it does for the business and who relies on it.
Your WooCommerce, WordPress and PHP versions, and your hosting setup.
Product counts by type: simple, variable, grouped, external and any custom types from plugins.
Your product with the most variations, and how many attributes it uses.
Every custom field and where it shows on the storefront.
Customer, order and active subscription counts, and which payment gateway holds the saved cards.
Integrations: ERP, warehouse, accounting, email, reviews and marketplaces.
A full crawl of the site, plus 12 months of landing page data from Google Search Console and analytics.
A decision on the blog: move it to Shopify, or keep WordPress for editorial content.
Your quietest trading weeks for launch, and who signs off each area.

Step-by-step WooCommerce to Shopify migration

Inventory the store and plugins. Crawl the site and list every plugin, custom field, integration and tracking script. Note any business rule that lives in a plugin or in functions.php.
Map fields and URLs. Give every product field, customer field, post, page and indexable URL a Shopify destination. Agree which plugins are replaced by native Shopify features, which by apps and which aren't needed.
Choose your tooling. Cart2Cart and LitExtension connect to WooCommerce and copy common records. Matrixify has a file-based WooCommerce and WordPress process: export, run a dry run that generates a template, check it, then import. For stores with heavy custom fields we add our own scripts.
Build the storefront. Build the theme, set up apps, payments, tax, shipping profiles and markets.
Run a rehearsal import. Import a full copy of the data and reconcile it: counts, prices, stock, images, customer-to-order links, subscriptions and redirects. Fix the mapping and run it again until it's clean.
Test end to end. Place real orders, renew a test subscription, redeem a gift card and a coupon, and check every notification and integration.
Freeze and cut over. Agree a short content and order freeze, run the final delta import, publish redirects, connect the domain and switch DNS.
Monitor. Watch 404s, Search Console, conversion rate, payments and support tickets daily for the first two weeks.

Keep WooCommerce running and unchanged until you are confident. It is your rollback plan.

SEO: mapping WooCommerce URLs to Shopify with 301 redirects

Shopify uses fixed URL patterns, so nearly every WooCommerce URL changes. The redirect map protects your rankings.

What WooCommerce URLs look like

Products: /product/product-name/ by default. Stores using "Shop base with category" get /shop/category/product-name/.
Product categories: /product-category/category-name/, with nested categories such as /product-category/parent/child/.
Product tags: /product-tag/tag-name/.
Shop page: /shop/.
Posts: depends on your WordPress permalink setting, for example /post-name/ or /2024/05/post-name/.
Pages: /page-name/.
Plain permalinks: ID-based URLs such as /?product=111.

Where they go on Shopify

Products go to /products/handle.
Product categories go to /collections/handle.
Pages go to /pages/handle.
Posts go to /blogs/blog-name/handle, for example /blogs/news/handle.
Tag archives usually redirect to the matching collection.

How to build the redirect map

Export every indexable URL from your crawl, your XML sitemaps and Search Console.
Match each product by SKU or WooCommerce product ID, not by name.
Keep handles the same as your WooCommerce slugs where you can. It keeps the map simple.
Send discontinued products to the closest collection, not the homepage.
Import the list in Shopify under Content, Menus, URL redirects, Import. Shopify allows up to 100,000 redirects per store, or 20 million on Shopify Plus.
After launch, crawl the old URL list and check for 404s and redirect chains.

Watch the trailing slash. WooCommerce URLs usually end in a slash and Shopify's don't, so test both versions of your top pages. Also note that a Shopify redirect only fires when the old path returns a 404. If a live page exists at that path, the redirect is ignored.

Plugins and the Shopify apps that replace them

Start with native Shopify features, then add apps where there's a clear gap. Fewer apps means a faster, simpler store.

WooCommerce Subscriptions: Shopify Subscriptions or another subscription app, such as Recharge.
Yoast SEO or Rank Math: Shopify's built-in SEO fields, sitemap and canonical tags.
ACF and custom fields: metafields and metaobjects, editable in the admin.
Product Add-Ons: a product options app, or line item properties in the theme.
WPML or Polylang: Shopify Markets with Translate & Adapt or a translation app.
Table rate shipping: Shopify shipping profiles and rates, or carrier-calculated rates.
Gift card plugins: Shopify's native gift cards.
Points and rewards: a loyalty app such as Smile.io or LoyaltyLion.
Product reviews: Judge.me, Okendo or Yotpo.
Mailchimp or Klaviyo plugins: the email platform's Shopify integration.
Wholesale plugins: Shopify B2B, which is built into Shopify Plus, or a wholesale app.

Should you keep WordPress for the blog?

You can. Moving posts into Shopify's blog puts content and commerce in one admin. Keeping WordPress suits teams that publish a lot and rely on its editor. If you keep it, put it on a subdomain or reverse proxy it, and plan its links into the store.

Timeline and team

A WooCommerce to Shopify migration typically takes 4 to 6 weeks, depending on catalogue size, integrations and design scope. Stores with active subscriptions, heavy custom fields or a full redesign take longer. We confirm the timeline after the risk assessment.

On your side, you need:

A project owner who can make scope calls quickly.
Someone who knows the products and the data behind them.
Someone who knows operations: fulfilment, customer service and finance.
Access to hosting, WordPress admin and your payment gateway for exports and subscription transfers.

On ours, a WooCommerce migration usually involves a project lead, Shopify developers, a data migration specialist and QA. Our JellyBean Tanning migration write-up shows how we move customer and order history with dry runs and verification after every batch. That project came from Wix, but the method is the same.

Common WooCommerce migration mistakes

Rebuilding every plugin. Many plugins exist to fill gaps Shopify already covers. Replace the business need, not the plugin.
Forgetting the blog. Posts often drive more organic traffic than products. They need redirects too.
Leaving subscriptions until last. Subscription transfers depend on your gateway and need testing early.
Redirecting everything to the homepage. Map each URL to its closest match.
Importing orders with notifications on. Customers get confirmation emails for orders from years ago.
Ignoring custom fields. Data stored in ACF or product meta disappears from the storefront if it isn't mapped to metafields.
Launching without a rehearsal. The first full import always finds issues. Make sure it isn't the launch import.

WooCommerce to Shopify FAQ

Not if every indexable URL has a mapped 301 redirect and your content and metadata come across. Expect some movement while Google re-crawls. Monitor Search Console daily for the first weeks.

No. Passwords are stored as one-way hashes and can't be moved. Customers activate their Shopify accounts or sign in with a one-time code.

It depends on your payment gateway and the Shopify subscription app you choose. Some gateways allow saved payment details to be transferred. Check this in the audit, before you commit to a launch date.

Yes. You can move posts into Shopify or keep WordPress for editorial content. Compare both against how often you publish and where your organic traffic comes from.

For a small catalogue with few plugins and little organic traffic, a migration app can be enough, as long as someone checks the data afterwards. Once SEO, subscriptions or integrations matter, a managed migration is safer.

No. WooCommerce stays live while the Shopify store is built and tested. Only a short freeze before cutover is needed.