To migrate WooCommerce to Shopify, you move a catalog, customers, orders and content out of a WordPress database, replace every plugin with an app or a native feature, and give every old URL a 301 redirect to its new address. The data is the easy part. The plugins and the URLs decide how the project goes.
We are noprob agency, and we run these moves with the Shopify Launch Sprint. This guide covers only what is specific to WooCommerce. For the parts that are the same on every platform (scope, timeline, risks), read our guide to migrating to Shopify. For the SEO side in general, use the migration SEO checklist. For the budget, see how much a Shopify migration costs. Our reference is one WooCommerce store we moved in 2026, Integratori DTC Nazzi. One store is not a statistic, and we say so where it matters.
Why do stores move from WooCommerce to Shopify?
WooCommerce is the largest single source of stores arriving on Shopify: 9,204 of the 27,247 merchants who moved from other platforms in the 90 days to 9 October 2026, about a third, according to Store Leads. That is a gross flow, and the points where these moves go wrong are well known. They are the ones this guide walks through.
Whether you should move at all is a different question, and we answer it in Shopify vs WooCommerce. This guide assumes you have decided and want to know what the work looks like.
How did the Nazzi move from WooCommerce to Shopify go?
Integratori DTC Nazzi, a supplement brand on WooCommerce, went live on Shopify on 19 July 2026 and sold 105% more online in its first 85 days than in the same days of 2025. The full numbers are in the Nazzi case study. Here we keep only what was specific to leaving WooCommerce.
We built the new store in May and June while the WooCommerce one kept selling, and it sold until the day before go live. What the move had to carry out of the WordPress database was the blog, the order and customer history since 2023, and the addresses Google already knew. On Google, clicks dipped in August and then recovered: in the last 28 days they are 2.7 times, and impressions 4.0 times, the same 28 days of 2025.
Read this honestly. It is one store, with its own seasonality, and with email work that started in 2025, so the platform alone does not explain the result.
Where does each WooCommerce object go in Shopify?
Every WooCommerce object has a home in Shopify, but not always a like-for-like one: products and customers import from CSV, while orders, coupons, reviews and blog content need another route. Shopify’s own page on migrating from WooCommerce lists the supported paths. On the WooCommerce side, the starting point is the product CSV exporter under Products, All Products, Export.
- Simple products: one CSV row becomes one Shopify product. Weights have to be converted to grams, and sale dates are not imported, so scheduled sales are re-created by hand.
- Variable products: each variation row becomes a Shopify variant. Shopify allows three options per product (variants documentation), and a product with four attributes imports without its variants. WooCommerce also warns that its export can drop attribute values from variation names, so check the variation rows before importing.
- Grouped, external and downloadable products: there is no one-to-one type. Grouped products become a bundle or separate products, external products become a link out, downloads need a digital downloads app.
- Attributes: the ones that change price or stock (size, colour) become options. The descriptive ones (material, flavour) become metafields, which then feed storefront filters.
- Categories: a nested WooCommerce hierarchy becomes flat collections. Convert categories to tags, then build automatic collections from the tags, and rebuild the nesting in the menu.
- Customers: addresses import from CSV, passwords do not. Shopify notes that WooCommerce’s native customer export lacks full address details, so you need a plugin for it. Customers get an account invitation or sign in with a one-time code (customer import).
- Orders: import them after products and customers, with an app such as Matrixify or LitExtension. Then reconcile order count and totals against WooCommerce.
- Coupons: recreate them as Shopify discounts. Most stores carry dozens of dead codes: this is the moment to drop them.
- Reviews: they are WordPress comments, not part of the product export. Use a review app that imports a CSV.
- Pages and posts: pages become pages and posts become blog articles. Leftover shortcodes and page builder markup show up as raw text after import, so plan to rebuild those pages, not to import them.
- Images: Shopify downloads them from the live WooCommerce URLs, so keep the old store online during the import. Anything that hotlinks to wp-content/uploads, such as old newsletters, breaks after the domain switch.
Which WooCommerce plugins need a Shopify replacement?
Every plugin that does a job for customers or for your team needs a decision: a native Shopify feature, an app, or dropping it. Our opinion is blunt: migrate jobs, not plugins. Export the plugin list from WordPress, write next to each one the job it does and who depends on it, then decide.
- SEO plugins (Yoast, Rank Math): titles, meta descriptions, image alt text, redirects and the XML sitemap are native in Shopify. The plugin goes away, the values do not: carry the title and description of every page that ranks.
- Caching, security and backup plugins: they disappear, because Shopify hosts the store.
- Page builders: they become theme sections and blocks.
- Filters and search plugins: Shopify Search & Discovery covers most of it, fed by the metafields above.
- Multilingual plugins (WPML, Polylang): Shopify Markets and Translate & Adapt, with a separate URL structure per language to map in the redirects.
- Product add-ons and custom fields: options, metafields, or an app when the price changes with the choice.
- Subscriptions, memberships, bookings: apps, and the hardest to move. Check first how saved payment methods travel.
- Abandoned cart and email plugins: an email platform such as Klaviyo, connected to Shopify.
- Snippets in functions.php: each one is a hidden plugin. Read the child theme and list them.
Checkout is hosted by Shopify, so PHP customizations of the WooCommerce checkout do not carry over: some can be rebuilt with checkout extensions, others are dropped. In the Sprint we write the storefront from scratch with our Custom AI System, so many of these jobs become code in the theme instead of another monthly app.
How do you build the redirect map from WordPress URLs?
You build it by listing every old WordPress URL that has traffic, links or rankings, then mapping each to the nearest Shopify URL, ideally by keeping the slug and changing only the prefix. Keeping slugs identical makes most of the map mechanical. The typical WooCommerce patterns:
- /product/blue-shirt/ becomes /products/blue-shirt
- /product-category/shirts/ becomes /collections/shirts
- /shop/ becomes /collections/all
- /about/ becomes /pages/about
- /my-account/ becomes /account
- /blue-shirt-review/ or /2025/05/blue-shirt-review/ (a post) becomes /blogs/news/blue-shirt-review
The blog is where the map grows. WordPress posts live at the root of the domain and Shopify puts them under /blogs/, so every article changes address. Nazzi had over 140 health articles that Google already knew, and they came across to Shopify. Tag archives, author pages, /feed/, /page/2/ pagination, internal search and attachment pages have no equivalent: redirect the ones with links or traffic to the nearest page and let the rest go.
To find the URLs, combine four sources: a crawl of the old site, the Pages report in Search Console, your backlinks, and archived copies of the old site. For Nazzi we checked 215 archived WooCommerce addresses one by one after go live and delivered a 301 redirect CSV ready to import in Shopify. In Shopify the CSV has two columns, the old path and the new one.
The better order is to build the map before launch and load it before the domain moves, as Shopify’s page also advises. The map does not prevent a dip, and the Nazzi clicks fell in August. It is what lets Google carry the old pages across, and Google’s guidance on site moves asks for permanent redirects kept for as long as possible.
How do you set up payments, shipping and taxes?
Payments, shipping and taxes are rebuilt from scratch in Shopify settings, not imported, so you copy the rules from WooCommerce by hand and then test them with real orders.
- Payments: WooCommerce gateways are plugins. On Shopify, use Shopify Payments where it is available in your country, or a third-party gateway, which adds a transaction fee on top of the plan. Saved cards and subscription tokens only move if your payment processor migrates them: ask before you choose the cutover date.
- Taxes: check whether your WooCommerce prices are entered with or without tax, then set the same in Shopify, region by region. A mismatch shifts every total at checkout.
- Shipping: WooCommerce zones, methods and shipping classes become Shopify shipping profiles and rates.
Place a test order for each payment method, each shipping zone and each tax region. It takes an afternoon and it is the cheapest insurance in the project.
How do you keep tracking working?
You keep tracking working by rebuilding it before launch on the same GA4 property and the same ad accounts, so the history continues. On WooCommerce it usually runs through a Tag Manager or analytics plugin reading the theme; on Shopify the events come from the customer events layer and the native Google and Meta channels, and the purchase event fires from Shopify’s hosted checkout.
Tracking was the one thing that did not go smoothly on Nazzi: the setup was not right in the first week after the campaigns restarted and was fixed on 20 August, so those days cannot be compared. Server-side tracking makes the conversions more reliable once the basics are in place.
In what order should the cutover happen?
The cutover works in this order, with the old store selling until the last step:
- Build the new store while WooCommerce keeps selling, as at Nazzi.
- Import products, then customers, then orders, and reconcile the counts.
- Rebuild pages, blog, menus and the plugin jobs on the new theme.
- Load the redirect CSV and run the test orders.
- On go live day, import the orders and customers created since the first import, disconnect the domain from the old host, connect it to Shopify, and check the tracking.
- Crawl the list of old URLs again and fix anything that does not land on the right page. Then watch Search Console for the following weeks.
Frequently asked questions
Can I import my WooCommerce orders into Shopify?
Yes, historical orders can be imported with an app such as Matrixify or LitExtension, after products and customers are in. They arrive as history, so reports and customer accounts stay complete.
Do customers keep their passwords when I move from WooCommerce to Shopify?
No. Customer details and addresses import, passwords do not. Customers receive an invitation or sign in with a one-time code, so warn them before launch.
Will I lose my Google rankings migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify?
Rankings usually move for a few weeks. A complete 301 redirect map, kept content and monitoring in Search Console let them recover. On Nazzi, clicks dipped in August and were above the earlier level by September.
What happens to my WordPress blog?
It can move into the Shopify blog, with every article getting a new address and a redirect. We moved over 140 articles this way for Nazzi. Posts built with page builders or shortcodes need rebuilding.
Do my WooCommerce plugins work on Shopify?
No. Each plugin is replaced by a native Shopify feature, an app, or code in the theme, or dropped. List the job each plugin does first, then decide.
How long does a WooCommerce to Shopify migration take?
It depends on catalog, plugins and design. Nazzi was built across May and June 2026 and went live on 19 July. With the Shopify Launch Sprint the store is ready on day 14 and go live falls between day 15 and 30.
A Final Note
Moving from WooCommerce is mostly an inventory job: every product, every URL, every plugin, every setting. The brands that struggle are not the ones with the biggest store but the ones that discovered half of that list after launch.
The Shopify Launch Sprint moves your store to Shopify in 14 days with our Custom AI System: a fixed calendar, a public price and 4 written guarantees.
Antonio Manitta
Founder & eCommerce Manager at NoProb Agency
For over 7 years I have helped fashion, supplements, and DTC brands scale their eCommerce. I work in long-term partnership with three brands at a time, building stable systems that compound.
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