Migrate to Shopify: WooCommerce and Other Platforms

Description

Service Migrate your store to Shopify

A Shopify migration moves products, customers and order history into a new store, rebuilds the design as a Shopify theme, and redirects every old URL to its new address so search traffic is not lost. Passwords, plugins and custom checkout code do not carry over. WavX runs the move from a written URL map and a rehearsed import.

Discuss a Shopify requirement Last updated 2 October 2026

What moves, and how

A migration is several separate moves, each with its own tool and its own catch. The details below are from Shopify's documentation as of October 2026.

Data

How it moves

What to watch

Products, variants, images

Shopify's free Store Migration app (it lists WooCommerce, Wix, Square, Etsy, Amazon, eBay, Clover and Lightspeed as sources), a product CSV, or a script using the Admin API

A product CSV cannot exceed 15 MB. A product can have up to three options and 2,048 variants; Shopify's WooCommerce guide says products with more than three options will not have their options imported

Customers

The Store Migration app or a customer CSV of up to 15 MB

Shopify says there is no data mapping for customer CSV imports, so the file must match its template. Passwords cannot be migrated

Order history

A third-party migration app or a script using the Admin API

Shopify's own app lists products and customer information only. Import products first, then customers, then orders, so the records link up

Custom product fields

Mapped to metafields

Decide the list before import, not after

Pages and blog posts

A migration app, the API, or copied by hand for a small site

Internal links inside the content still point at old URLs and need rewriting

Reviews

Handled separately

Shopify's WooCommerce guide says reviews cannot be exported or migrated with its tools. Ask the reviews app you choose on Shopify what it can import

URLs

A redirect for each old address

See the next section

Design

Rebuilt as a Shopify theme, or replaced with a bought one

A WordPress theme cannot be converted. See theme development

Payments, shipping, taxes

Configured afresh in Shopify

Nothing carries over

One practical warning from Shopify's guide: when historical orders are imported, every staff member set to receive new-order notifications gets an email for each imported order. Those notifications are switched off before the import and back on afterwards.

Protecting search rankings

On a move to Shopify, almost every URL changes. Shopify fixes the paths for products and collections at /products and /collections , while a WooCommerce store by default uses /product/ and /product-category/ . Without redirects, every link and every search result pointing at the old store leads to an error page.

What WavX does, following Google's guidance for site moves:

Crawl and export the old site before anything changes: every indexed URL, with its title, description and the search traffic it receives.

Map each old URL to its closest new page. Product to product, category to collection, article to article. Google warns against redirecting many old URLs to one irrelevant destination such as the home page, which it may treat as a soft 404.

Load the map as Shopify URL redirects. They can be imported in bulk from a CSV. A store can hold up to 1,00,000 redirects, and far more on Plus.

Keep titles, descriptions and content the same on day one. Changing platform and rewriting pages in the same week makes it impossible to tell which change moved a ranking.

Submit the new sitemap. Shopify generates sitemap.xml automatically; it is submitted in Google Search Console after launch. The Change of Address tool is not needed when the domain stays the same.

Leave the redirects in place. Google's advice is as long as possible, generally at least a year.

Three Shopify rules catch people out. A redirect works only from a URL that no longer loads a page. URLs that begin with /apps , /application , /cart , /carts , /orders , /services or /shop cannot be redirected at all, which matters if the old store's catalogue or service pages lived under /shop or /services . And old URLs that rely on query strings may not redirect as expected.

Google says to expect temporary fluctuation in rankings during any move, and no migration can promise otherwise. The website migration SEO checklist is the working document, and SEO for site migrations covers moves where search traffic is the main risk.

The migration checklist

Before the build

Export products, customers, orders, pages and posts from the old store, and take a full backup.

Crawl the old site and save the URL list with traffic data.

List every plugin and custom function, and decide for each: a Shopify setting, an app, a custom build, or dropped.

Choose the Shopify plan. Checkout changes and some app types depend on it.

Build and rehearsal

Set up the store, theme, navigation and policies.

Run a trial import of products. Check variants, images, prices, tax settings, weights and SKUs against the source, not by eye but by count.

Import customers, then order history.

Configure payments, shipping zones and rates, taxes and notification emails.

Place test orders with each payment method, including cash on delivery, and a refund.

Load the redirects and test a sample from every URL type.

Switch-over

Stop changes on the old store and import the orders and customers created since the rehearsal.

Point the domain at Shopify at a quiet hour.

Check live checkout, tracking, order emails and the sitemap.

After launch

Watch for 404 errors and add redirects for any that were missed.

Watch Search Console coverage and the store's real-user speed reports for the first few weeks.

Keep the old store's data, read-only, until the accounts for the period are closed.

Points specific to Indian stores

Payments. India is not on Shopify's list of countries where Shopify Payments is available, as of October 2026. Indian stores take payments through a third-party provider such as Razorpay, whose Shopify integration supports UPI, cards, wallets and netbanking.

Transaction fees. Because the gateway is a third party, Shopify's fee for third-party payment providers applies. Its India pricing page lists 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, as of October 2026, in addition to the gateway's own charge. A WooCommerce store pays no equivalent platform fee, so this belongs in the decision.

Cash on delivery. COD is set up as a manual payment method. Orders are marked unpaid until someone marks them paid, so COD reconciliation needs a process or an integration.

Recurring payments. Razorpay's Shopify documentation lists Subscriptions as not supported. If the old store sells subscriptions, settle this before committing to the move.

What does not carry over

Passwords. With Shopify's current customer accounts, customers sign in with a one-time six-digit code sent by email, so no reset campaign is needed. With legacy accounts, customers are invited to create new passwords.

Plugins. Each one is replaced by a Shopify feature, an app or custom work, or dropped.

Custom checkout code. Shopify's checkout is changed only through its own tools, and some of those need Plus. See checkout customisation .

Products with more than three options. These need restructuring before import.

SEO plugin settings. Titles and descriptions move as data. Redirect rules, schema settings and sitemap rules do not.

When not to migrate

The store works and the problem is speed or hosting. Fixing that on the current platform is cheaper than moving.

Your selling model depends on something Shopify restricts. Checkout control on lower plans, more than three product options, or a URL structure you cannot give up.

The fee arithmetic does not work. At high order volumes on a low plan, the third-party transaction fee can outweigh what you save on hosting and maintenance.

You would be migrating to escape a bad build, not a bad platform. A poorly built WooCommerce store becomes a poorly built Shopify store if the same shortcuts are taken.

The comparisons in Shopify vs WooCommerce in India and Shopify vs WooCommerce vs custom set out the trade-offs before you commit.

Cost

A migration is quoted after WavX has seen the old store's data, because the work depends on catalogue size, the number of URL types and how much custom behaviour has to be rebuilt. Two WavX guides print planning ranges. The Shopify store setup cost guide gives about ₹50,000 for a basic WooCommerce store to over ₹2.5 lakh for a complex Magento store. The Shopify vs WooCommerce vs custom guide gives ₹1.5 lakh to ₹4 lakh for catalogues of 500 to 5,000 SKUs. Both are planning ranges, not quotes.

Frequently asked questions

Will I lose my Google rankings when I move to Shopify?

Nobody can promise that rankings will not move. Google says to expect temporary fluctuation after any site move. What protects them is a redirect from every old URL to its closest new page, kept in place for at least a year, and page titles and content that do not change at the same time as the platform.

Can customer passwords be moved to Shopify?

No. Shopify states that customer passwords cannot be migrated from another store. With Shopify's current customer accounts this matters less, because customers sign in with a one-time six-digit code sent to their email and do not need a password.

Can my order history be moved?

Yes, but not with Shopify's own free migration app, which lists products and customer information only. Historical orders are brought in with a third-party migration app or a script written against the Admin API, after products and customers have been imported.

How long does a migration take?

It depends on catalogue size, how much custom behaviour the old store has, and whether the design is being rebuilt or replaced with a bought theme. We give a timeline with the quote after seeing the old store's data.

How much does a WooCommerce to Shopify migration cost?

It is quoted after scoping. Our published guides print planning ranges: from about ₹50,000 for a basic WooCommerce store to over ₹2.5 lakh for a complex Magento store, and ₹1.5 lakh to ₹4 lakh for catalogues of 500 to 5,000 SKUs. These are planning figures, not quotes.

Should every store move to Shopify?

No. If the current store works and the complaint is hosting or speed, fixing that is cheaper than moving. Shopify also charges a fee on orders paid through third-party gateways, which applies to Indian stores because Shopify Payments is not offered in India.

Sources

Shopify Help Center: Migrating to Shopify · read 2 October 2026

Shopify Help Center: Migrating from WooCommerce · read 2 October 2026

Shopify App Store: Shopify Store Migration · read 2 October 2026

Shopify Help Center: Importing products with a CSV · read 2 October 2026

Shopify Help Center: Importing and exporting customers · read 2 October 2026

Shopify Help Center: Customer accounts · read 2 October 2026

Shopify Help Center: Adding variants (limits) · read 2 October 2026

Shopify Help Center: URL redirects · read 2 October 2026

Shopify Help Center: Finding and submitting your sitemap · read 2 October 2026

Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes · read 2 October 2026

WooCommerce documentation: Permalinks · read 2 October 2026

Shopify Help Center: Shopify Payments supported countries · read 2 October 2026

Shopify India pricing (third-party payment provider fees) · read 2 October 2026

Razorpay docs: Shopify integration · read 2 October 2026

Shopify Help Center: Manual payment methods · read 2 October 2026

Shopify developer docs: Custom data (metafields and metaobjects) · read 2 October 2026

Related

SEO for site migrations

Shopify vs WooCommerce in India

Shopify vs WooCommerce vs custom

Custom Shopify theme development

Shopify development at WavX

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