How to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce

Leaving Shopify is usually a cost decision. Transaction fees, app subscriptions and per-seat pricing add up, and at a certain revenue WooCommerce plus decent hosting is dramatically cheaper.

The good news is that the data direction is the easy one. WooCommerce imposes no variant ceiling, allows unlimited attributes, and has a nested category tree, so nothing has to be collapsed or discarded. The difficulty moves elsewhere.

Before you export anything

Do this audit first, because it determines whether the project is two days or two months.

1. List every paid app and what it holds. Reviews, subscriptions, loyalty points, bundles, wishlist data. None of it is in the product export.
2. Note your theme customisations. Liquid templates do not port. Budget for a WooCommerce theme build or a close-enough starting point.
3. Check your payment gateway. Shopify Payments does not exist off Shopify. You need a new merchant account, and stored card tokens do not transfer.
4. Export your URL list from Search Console. Do it now while the store is live and Google still reports on it.

Step 1: Export the catalogue

Two routes.

Shopify's built-in export

Products, then Export, then All products, CSV for Excel. You get Shopify's own schema: Handle, Title, Body (HTML), the Option columns, the Variant columns and Image Src.

It is complete and accurate for what it covers. It omits metafields entirely, which is where a lot of stores keep specifications, ingredients and care instructions.

Reading the storefront

The alternative is to read the store's public product data directly. This works without admin access, which matters if you are a developer quoting on a migration or the client cannot locate their login.

It also outputs in whatever schema you ask for. Tools like Scrapify read the store and write a WooCommerce-format CSV directly, which removes the conversion step entirely. If you want to understand what that data source contains, see the Shopify products.json endpoint explained.

Step 2: Convert the schema

If you used Shopify's export, the columns need renaming and the rows need restructuring. The core mapping:

The row structure also changes. Shopify uses one row per variant grouped by Handle. WooCommerce uses one variable parent row plus one variation row per combination, with each variation pointing at the parent's SKU. The full field reference is in the WooCommerce product CSV schema explained.

Step 3: Import into WooCommerce

Products, All Products, Import. Upload the file, check the column mapping screen carefully, and run it.

Three settings that matter:

• Update existing products. Leave off for the first run. On for subsequent corrective runs.
• Batch size. Not exposed in the UI, but it is what your hosting limits govern. If the import dies, the file is too big for the server, not malformed.
• Column mapping. Anything WooCommerce cannot auto-detect defaults to "Do not import". Scroll the whole list.

The realistic constraint is images. WooCommerce downloads every image URL into the media library synchronously during the import request. A 2,000 product catalogue with six images each is 12,000 downloads, and shared hosting will not survive that in one request.

Split into batches of 200 to 500 products, or use an importer that fetches images in the background. Our free WordPress plugin does the latter: it reads a live feed and handles batching, retries and image fetching outside the request cycle. The setup is documented in the plugin guide.

Step 4: Make the variations actually appear

This is the most common "the import worked but the site is broken" report, and it always has the same cause.

For a variable product to show its options on the front end, three things must all be true:

1. The parent row has Type set to variable.
2. Every attribute on the parent has its visible flag and its in variations flag set to 1.
3. Each variation row has Type set to variation and Parent set to the parent's SKU.

Miss the "in variations" flag and WooCommerce imports the attribute as a display-only specification. The variations exist in the database, they just have nothing to attach to, so the product renders as a plain item with a spec table and no add-to-cart options.

Fixing it after the fact means re-importing with the flag set, not editing products by hand.

Step 5: Redirects

Shopify URLs look like /products/premium-cotton-tee and /collections/t-shirts. WooCommerce defaults to /product/premium-cotton-tee and /product-category/t-shirts.

You have an unusual option here that most migrations do not: WooCommerce lets you change its permalink base. Set the product base to products and the category base to collections under Settings, Permalinks, and a large share of your URLs match without any redirect at all.

It feels like a hack. It saves hundreds of redirect rules and eliminates the risk of getting them wrong. Take the win.

For whatever still differs, add 301s with Redirection or at the server level, and verify with a header checker rather than by clicking, because a 302 looks identical in a browser and passes no authority.

Step 6: Replace the apps

Rough equivalents for the common ones:

Pre-launch checklist

• Product count matches Shopify exactly.
• Variable products show their dropdowns on the front end.
• Zero products without a featured image.
• Sale prices are the discounted figure, not the original.
• Media library count is roughly your expected image total, meaning nothing failed to download.
• Tax and shipping rules recreated and tested at checkout.
• A real test order placed, paid, refunded.
• Redirects returning 301, spot checked.
• Search Console property added for the new setup.

Keep the Shopify store on its cheapest plan for a month after cutover. It is a cheap insurance policy against the thing you did not think to check.

Frequently asked questions