---
title: "WooCommerce to Shopify: what survives the move"
description: "What migrates cleanly, what needs rebuilding, and what is silently lost: a field checklist for leaving WooCommerce without losing your rankings."
author: "Luboš Zápotočný"
published: "2026-07-01"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://zapolu.com/blog/woocommerce-to-shopify/"
---

# WooCommerce to Shopify: what survives the move

WooCommerce to Shopify is the most common migration we're asked
about, and the pattern behind it is consistent: the shop outgrew
WordPress. Plugin conflicts consume a day of work each week, every
update gets postponed because it might break the site, and the
hosting bill keeps climbing to compensate for the architecture.
Shopify's proposition (the platform is managed by the vendor) is
most persuasive at exactly this moment.

The migration itself is routinely undersold. "There's an importer"
is accurate but incomplete. This is what survives the move, what
needs rebuilding, and what disappears silently unless someone
verifies it.

## What migrates cleanly

- **Products**, mostly. Simple and variable products map to Shopify
  products and variants. Note the limits: Shopify lifted the old
  100-variant cap (up to 2,048 per product for all merchants as of
  late 2025), but products are still limited to three options, and three
  options is exactly the limit complex WooCommerce catalogs exceed.
- **Customers**: names, emails, addresses. This part is a CSV export
  and import, once you've handled marketing-consent state.
- **Historical orders**, via import apps or the API, with enough
  caveats (statuses, partial refunds, tax rounding) that we treat
  imported orders as reference data, not accounting truth.

## What does not migrate: passwords

Customer **passwords are one-way hashes, and Shopify accepts no
imported hash from any platform**. Every customer will need to reset or
re-register. For a
shop that depends on repeat purchases, plan it as a re-activation campaign
well before cutover night.

## What needs rebuilding, not copying

- **The plugin stack.** Each WooCommerce plugin needs a decision: a
  Shopify app, a Shopify Function, a theme feature, or the
  conclusion that its purpose is no longer known. This inventory is the
  real scope of the project.
- **Checkout customizations.** Whatever you built into WooCommerce's
  checkout, Shopify's checkout is customizable only within defined
  boundaries (broader on Shopify Plus). Anything beyond them has to
  be redesigned from scratch.
- **Multilingual setups.** WPML or Polylang constructions map onto
  Shopify Markets plus translation apps, a different model rather
  than a format conversion.
- **The content site around the shop.** WordPress is a better CMS
  than Shopify; blogs and landing pages need a destination: Shopify's
  blog, a headless setup, or a WordPress that stays for content only.

## What happens to the rankings

SEO fails first in low-budget migrations, because the damage shows up
weeks later where nobody connects cause and effect. The URL
structure changes by design: `/product-category/shoes/` becomes
`/collections/shoes/`, every product path changes, and Shopify
additionally can't serve arbitrary URL structures. The rankings survive
only with mechanical discipline:

1. Export a **complete URL inventory** from the live shop; crawl it,
   don't trust the sitemap alone.
2. Map **every URL that has traffic or backlinks** to its exact new
   home. Category pages especially; they usually hold the rankings.
3. Ship the **301 redirects at cutover**. Rankings decline for as
   long as the redirects are missing.
4. **Benchmark organic traffic before**, so that "did the migration
   hurt us" can be answered from a chart.

## When the answer isn't Shopify

If what's driving you out of WooCommerce is catalog complexity or
B2B (contract pricing, approval chains, variant structures that
don't fit three options),
you may hit the same limits on Shopify, and
[Magento's model](/services/magento/) might fit better. That
decision is most of what our
[migration assessments](/services/platform-migration/) exist to
settle, and the [replatform-or-fix question](/blog/replatform-or-fix/)
is worth asking honestly before either.

With the URL inventory done first, the redirect map shipped at
cutover, and passwords handled as a campaign, this migration is
routine. Skip those steps and it turns into a quarter of lost
rankings and a support queue full of customers who can't log in.
If you're planning
one, [we'll review the plan with you](/contact/) on a free call.