How to move from WooCommerce to Shopify

The short answer

A WooCommerce to Shopify migration moves five things: products, customers, order history, content (pages and blog posts) and your URLs. Import them in that order, products first, then customers, then historical orders, because Shopify links orders to existing products and customers. Use a CSV import for simple catalogs, a migration app for orders and larger stores, and set up 301 redirects from every old WooCommerce URL before you point your domain at Shopify. Customer passwords cannot be moved, so plan how customers will sign in on day one. Most of the risk sits in the redirects and the product data, not the import itself.

Before you start: take an inventory

WooCommerce stores grow through plugins, and each plugin adds data or behavior Shopify will need to replace. Before you export anything, write down:

• Product counts by type: simple, variable, grouped, digital, subscriptions and bundles.
• Attributes and variations. Shopify allows up to 2,048 variants per product (raised from 100 in October 2025) and up to three options, such as size, color and material. Products with more than three option types need a plan, and it is worth checking that your theme and apps handle large variant counts.
• Every plugin that touches the store: subscriptions, product add-ons, wholesale pricing, reviews, wishlists, loyalty, shipping rules and tax tools. For each one, note the Shopify app or built-in feature that replaces it, or decide to drop it.
• Integrations with accounting, inventory, shipping and email marketing.
• Your top pages by traffic and revenue from Google Search Console and analytics. These get the most careful redirect and content checks.

Step 1: export and clean your products

WooCommerce has a built-in product exporter under Products, All Products, Export. It can include variations and, if you choose, all custom meta from other plugins. Export everything, then clean the file before it goes anywhere near Shopify:

• Make sure every product and variation has a unique SKU. Missing SKUs cause most failed or duplicated imports.
• Map WooCommerce attributes to Shopify options (for example Size, Color, Material). Shopify needs the option name and value on each variant row.
• Check that image URLs still load. Shopify fetches images from those URLs during import.
• Decide your handles. A Shopify product handle becomes the end of the URL, so keep it the same as your WooCommerce slug where you can.
• Move product categories into collections. Manual collections suit curated groups; automated collections use tags, product type or vendor.

Shopify’s product CSV template has its own column names, so the WooCommerce export rarely imports as-is. For a few hundred products, reformatting the spreadsheet is manageable. For thousands of products, or variable products with many attributes, a migration app saves time and errors.

Step 2: move customers

Shopify imports customers from a CSV file (up to 15 MB per file, UTF-8 encoded). The Accepts Email Marketing column only takes yes or no, so carry over consent exactly as you recorded it. Do not mark everyone as subscribed.

Passwords do not transfer. Shopify says customer passwords cannot be migrated because they are encrypted outside Shopify. With Shopify’s newer customer accounts, customers sign in with a six-digit code sent to their email instead of a password, which removes most of the friction. Tell customers what changed in a short email after launch so they are not surprised.

Step 3: move order history

Historical orders cannot be imported by CSV. They need a migration app or Shopify’s Order API. Two practical tips:

1. Turn off staff order notifications first. Shopify sends a new-order email to staff for every imported order unless you switch those notifications off. Turn them back on after the import.
2. Decide how far back to go. You might import only recent years of orders so customers see their latest purchases, and keep a full export of older orders in storage for accounting.

Subscriptions are a special case. Active WooCommerce Subscriptions usually need a dedicated subscription app on Shopify and a planned cutover so nobody is billed twice or not at all. Talk to your payment provider about whether saved payment tokens can move.

Step 4: content and design

Shopify has pages and a blog, but no direct import from WordPress posts. A migration app can carry blog posts and pages across. If your WordPress blog is large and drives a lot of traffic, you have a second option: keep the blog on WordPress at a subdomain or subfolder handled by your developer, and move only the store. That keeps your content tools but means two systems to maintain.

This is also the moment to rebuild the theme rather than copy the old one. Shopify themes are built from sections you can edit yourself, so you can simplify the layout and drop features nobody used.

Moving your store and want a second opinion on the plan?Book a free 30-minute call and we will look at your current WooCommerce setup and tell you what we would handle first.

Step 5: redirects and SEO

This step decides whether you keep your Google rankings. WooCommerce URLs look like /product/blue-mug/ and /product-category/mugs/. Shopify uses fixed paths: /products/blue-mug and /collections/mugs. Pages move to /pages/, and blog posts to /blogs/news/ (or your blog’s handle). Every old URL that changes needs a 301 redirect.

1. Crawl the old site and export every URL: products, categories, tags, pages, posts and images that get search traffic.
2. Build a spreadsheet with two columns: old path and new path. Point each URL to its closest match, not to the homepage.
3. Import it in Shopify under Content, Menus, URL redirects, Import. Shopify allows up to 100,000 redirects on standard plans and 20 million on Plus.
4. Know the rule: Shopify redirects only fire when the old URL would return a 404. URLs with query strings may not redirect as expected, so test those separately.
5. Carry over titles and meta descriptions for your top pages, and keep product descriptions the same at launch so Google sees continuity.
6. After launch, submit the new sitemap at /sitemap.xml in Google Search Console and watch the Pages report for 404s for at least a month.

We cover this in more depth in our guide to a website redesign that keeps your SEO.

Free tools, apps or a partner: how to choose

Launch checklist

• Place real test orders for each payment method, a discount code and a shipping zone.
• Confirm tax settings and shipping rates match the old store.
• Rebuild email flows such as abandoned checkout and order follow-up.
• Reconnect integrations with accounting and inventory, and check that orders sync.
• Lower your domain’s DNS time-to-live a day ahead, then switch during a quiet period.
• Keep the WooCommerce site and a full backup offline for a few months in case you need data.

How JLB USA handles store migrations

JLB USA has built websites for growing businesses for more than 15 years, with 500+ clients and 1,000+ projects. We build on Shopify, Shopify Plus and WooCommerce, among others, so we can tell you honestly whether moving is worth it. If you are still deciding, read our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison. When we move a store, we set up redirects from old pages so rankings carry over, and you can edit your own store and keep it if you leave. See our web design and e-commerce services.

Related services

• Web design and e-commerce
• Shopify vs WooCommerce in 2026
• Redesign without losing SEO
• Systems integration