Migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify: process, data and cost

When does moving from WooCommerce to Shopify make sense?

The move makes sense when the store has grown and WordPress needs more maintenance than you want to provide. Typical signs:

• Something regularly breaks after plugin or WordPress updates, and you hardly dare to update any more.
• The store slows down as products and visitors grow, especially in the cart and at checkout.
• You pay annual licences for a dozen extensions plus good hosting and are close to the cost of a Shopify plan.
• Security depends on you: updates, backups, firewall.
• You want to connect channels such as Google, Meta, TikTok or marketplaces without maintaining a separate plugin for each.

A move makes less sense if your business is mainly content and the store is a small add-on, for example a large magazine with a few products. WordPress is often the better base as a content system in that case.

WooCommerce or Shopify: what is the difference?

WooCommerce is a plugin that turns WordPress into a store. So you run a WordPress installation with everything that comes with it. Shopify is a rented commerce platform where servers, security and updates sit with the provider.

The most important difference is responsibility. With WooCommerce you operate the software. With Shopify you are a customer of a platform.

Why security is a real argument. The security company Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 42% more than the year before. 91% of them were in plugins. A WooCommerce store with many extensions therefore has many places you have to keep up to date.

Which data comes along from WooCommerce to Shopify?

How the data moves technically. Unlike Magento or Shopware, Shopify has its own tool for WooCommerce: the Store Migration app connects to the WooCommerce store or reads its exports and transfers products, customers and historical orders. For simple stores that is often enough. With many custom fields, blog content and SEO data, we add import apps such as Matrixify, so the import can be repeated for the test migration and on go-live day.

How does the migration work?

The new store is built in parallel, and the WooCommerce store keeps selling until switch-over day.

1. Audit (one to two weeks). Which plugins are running and which of them do you really need? Which pages and posts bring traffic according to Search Console? Which payment methods, shipping services and integrations are connected?
2. Mapping (one to two weeks). Attribute to metafield, category to collection, plugin to app or built-in Shopify feature, plus the complete redirect list for products, categories, pages and blog.
3. Build and test migration (two to six weeks). Theme, apps, tracking and legal texts are set up, then a full test migration runs.
4. Go-live and aftercare (switch-over day plus four to eight weeks). Delta migration, domain switch, redirects and tracking checked, rankings monitored.

We describe the phases in detail in Migrating from Magento to Shopify.

What is different about WooCommerce?

• Blog and content. Many WooCommerce stores have built a large blog over the years that brings a lot of organic traffic. These posts need the same care as products: move the content, update internal links, redirect every URL. If you would rather keep the blog in WordPress, you can run it on a subdomain, but that splits content and rankings across two addresses.
• German legal plugins. Plugins such as Germanized or German Market handle unit prices, delivery times, mandatory checkout information and invoices. In Shopify, theme settings, legal text apps and invoicing apps take this over. Have these points checked legally before go-live.
• Page builders. Pages built with Elementor or similar builders cannot be transferred. The content moves, the layout is rebuilt in the Shopify theme.
• Custom code. Changes in functions.php or in child themes often only surface late in the move. Collect them during the audit so it is clear which of them an app or a built-in Shopify feature will cover.

Connecting inventory, ERP and shipping

After the move, more than the store has to work: orders must reach your inventory system, stock must flow back to the store, and shipping confirmations and invoices must reach your customers. In WooCommerce stores, these connections usually run through plugins that go away with the move. For Shopify there are ready-made connections for widely used systems in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, for example the JTL-Connector for JTL-Wawi, Xentral's Shopify connector, and apps from PlentyONE (formerly plentymarkets) and Billbee in the Shopify App Store.

We connect your system as part of our Shopify migration service and check with real test orders before go-live that payment method, shipping method, stock, shipping confirmation and invoice are correct. If there is no ready-made connection for your system, we clarify in the audit whether an app, a middleware service or a custom integration is the right route.

How long does the move take and what does it cost?

These ranges are market figures that agencies publish in 2026. A reliable price only exists after the audit. What pushes the range up and how to compare quotes is covered in What does a Shopify migration cost?.

Comparing running costs. WooCommerce looks cheaper because the software is free. Calculate three years: hosting, annual extension licences, maintenance and updates, security services and backups. Against that, Shopify has the plan, apps and payment fees. If you use an external payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an extra transaction fee of between 2% (Basic) and 0.2% (Plus), depending on the plan.

Checklist before you start

• List of all plugins, each with the question: do we still need this function?
• SEO titles and descriptions exported from Yoast or Rank Math
• Top URLs exported from Search Console, including blog posts
• Decision made: blog to Shopify or stay in WordPress
• Subscriptions and payment provider checked: can stored payment details be transferred?
• Mandatory legal information planned for Shopify (unit prices, delivery times, invoices)
• Go-live date set outside peak season

After go-live: marketing from one team

The same team that moves your store to Shopify can then take over your Meta ads, Google Ads and email marketing with Klaviyo. You skip the handover to a second agency, and tracking works from day one because we set it up during the move. More on our performance marketing page.

Frequently asked questions