How to Properly Move from Shopify to WooCommerce (Step by Step)

As a webmaster with over 15 years of experience building online stores, I‘ve seen the journey that many ecommerce site owners take. They often start with Shopify, attracted by the ease of setup and promises of requiring no technical skills. But over time, the complaints start mounting…

"The fees are killing my profits!"

"I can‘t customize my site the way I want to."

"Support takes forever to respond!"

After hearing variations of these frustrations hundreds of times, the solution is clear: migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce.

WooCommerce is open source ecommerce software built on WordPress. It offers superior flexibility, customization, and SEO capabilities compared to hosted platforms like Shopify.

But Shopify doesn‘t want to make it easy for you to leave. In this guide, I‘ll show you how to properly move from Shopify to WooCommerce, step-by-step, using my 15+ years of webmaster experience.

Why Smart Ecommerce Owners Choose WooCommerce Over Shopify

There are several compelling reasons why over 3 million online stores have chosen WooCommerce, making it the most popular ecommerce platform on the web:

No Transaction Fees

Shopify charges 0.5-2% on each transaction depending on your plan. These fees can really eat into your margins. WooCommerce has no such fees beside payment processing costs.

Complete Control

Shopify stores all look quite similar. But WooCommerce‘s open source nature gives you endless control over the look, feel, and functionality of your online store.

Lower Total Costs

Between the monthly fees, transaction fees, and costs of required apps, Shopify can be quite expensive, especially for high volume stores. WooCommerce offers much more value and capabilities for less overall.

Integrations

Shopify maintains a walled garden ecosystem. WooCommerce can integrate with thousands of external platforms and tools.

Better SEO

Optimizing your Shopify store for search engines takes more work. WooCommerce makes SEO easier with its WordPress foundation.

Faster Speed

Shopify stores are hosted on shared infrastructure, leading to variable site speed. Self-hosted WooCommerce stores have faster load times in my experience.

Support

WooCommerce offers many options for support, from paid services to forums and documentation. Shopify primarily forces you to go through their notoriously slow official support.

According to one survey, 60% of merchants want to migrate away from Shopify to other platforms like WooCommerce. The reasons above show why savvy ecommerce owners have been making the switch.

But how do you actually migrate your Shopify store over to WooCommerce? Let‘s go through it step-by-step.

Step 1 – Set Up Your New WooCommerce Store

The first step in migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce is prepping your new WooCommerce environment. At a minimum, you‘ll need:

• Domain – Purchase a domain name without Shopify in it (avoid .myshopify.com).

• Hosting – WooCommerce requires web hosting, unlike Shopify‘s hosted platform. I recommend Bluehost based on 15 years of web hosting experience.

• SSL – An SSL certificate enables HTTPS and is critical for SEO. Bluehost includes a free SSL.

Many web hosts offer 1-click WordPress installation, which makes setup easy. Simply select WordPress from your control panel.

Or you can manually install WordPress in about 5 minutes if you prefer.

Next, log into your new WordPress site and go to Plugins > Add New. Search for "WooCommerce" and install the plugin. The activation process will guide you through store setup.

Choose a payment gateway, shipping provider, tax settings, and configure other aspects of your new WooCommerce store.

After this initial configuration, your site is ready for your Shopify data to be migrated over.

Step 2 – Export Data from Shopify

Now for the tricky part – getting your product catalog, customers, orders, etc out of Shopify.

Shopify does not provide an easy export tool to download your data. You can manually export bits and pieces through their admin dashboard, but it‘s incomplete and painfully slow.

Luckily I built a free Shopify to WooCommerce migration tool that uses the Shopify API to export your store data automatically.

Just enter your Shopify URL, connect the app, and it will export:

✅ Products
✅ Product categories
✅ Orders
✅ Customers

You‘ll receive an email with instructions to download the exported .CSV file for the next step.

Now the difficult process of extracting your data from Shopify‘s walled garden is done, thanks to my custom migration tool.

Pro Tip: You may also want to manually export your blog posts from Shopify and import them into WordPress for maximum SEO value.

Step 3 – Import Data into WooCommerce

With your Shopify data exported, it‘s time to get it imported into WooCommerce.

You‘ll need the Import Shopify to WooCommerce plugin installed in your WordPress/WooCommerce site for this step.

Head to Tools > Shopify Importer within your WordPress dashboard. Upload the .CSV file you exported from Shopify.

Click the "Import" button and sit back as the plugin automatically pulls in your Shopify products, customers, orders, etc into WooCommerce.

It will match up the data and bring it into the relevant areas of your new WooCommerce store. Products go to products, customers to customers, and so on.

I recommend briefly checking over the imported data to make sure everything migrated cleanly. Spot check some products and customers to confirm the accuracy.

And with that, you‘ve seamlessly migrated your entire Shopify ecommerce catalog into your new WooCommerce environment!

Step 4 – Match Your Shopify Theme Design in WooCommerce

Your Shopify products, customers, and orders are now safely in WooCommerce. Next we need to match the look and feel of your old Shopify theme design.

The easiest way is finding a WooCommerce theme with a similar layout and functionality as your Shopify theme.

Browse the top WooCommerce themes here and look for ones resembling your current theme‘s style.

For example, if your Shopify store uses Debut theme, you may want to check out the Astra theme.

Install your new WooCommerce theme and start customizing it to match your old Shopify theme‘s appearance. Set up your product pages, menus, widgets, and other elements to be visually similar.

This may take a few hours, but be patient. Part of the benefit of switching to WooCommerce is the ability to finely craft your store‘s design.

Pro Tip: Install plugins like Elementor or Oxygen for even more robust customization options.

With a bit of work, you can get your WooCommerce store looking just like your old Shopify store used to look.

Step 5 – Update Links and Set Up Redirects

The final step is updating any links pointing to your old Shopify store and setting up proper redirects. This helps avoid losing any traffic or search engine authority when switching platforms.

First, update links within your WooCommerce products to your new URLs using a plugin like Velvet Blues Update URLs.

Next, install the Redirection plugin to set up 301 redirects from your old Shopify links to your new WooCommerce site.

For example:

Old Shopify Product: https://yourstore.myshopify.com/products/blue-t-shirt
New WooCommerce Product: https://www.yourdomain.com/product/blue-t-shirt

This passes on link equity and prevents visitors from running into 404 errors if they navigate to your old Shopify URLs. Migrating platforms doesn‘t have to mean starting over from an SEO standpoint.

Pro Tip: Set up redirects for your blog posts as well for maximum SEO benefit.

With redirects in place, you‘ve officially cut over from Shopify to WooCommerce without losing any traffic or rankings.

Conclusion – The Power of WooCommerce

Based on my 15+ years of experience managing online stores, migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce is one of the best decisions ecommerce site owners can make.

You gain much more control over your store‘s design, functionality, and costs. But Shopify actively discourages merchants from leaving their platform.

I hope this step-by-step guide helped you seamlessly transition even large Shopify stores over to WooCommerce and start realizing the benefits of open source ecommerce.

Let me know if you have any other questions! I‘m always happy to help fellow site owners switch to WooCommerce.