Most Shopify to WordPress migration guides start with the assumption that you're moving your entire store to WooCommerce. That's one option, but it's not the only one, and it's not always the right one.
The organizations that contact us about leaving Shopify usually fall into two camps. The first is frustrated by Shopify's limitations around content marketing. Their blog feels like an afterthought because, in Shopify's architecture, it is.
They want a proper content platform with custom layouts, advanced SEO controls, and the ability to build landing pages that don't look like they were squeezed into a commerce template.
The second camp wants to leave Shopify entirely. They're paying transaction fees on third-party payment gateways, they've hit the ceiling on customization, or they want full ownership of their data and platform.
Both paths are viable. But they're fundamentally different projects with different costs, different risks, and different outcomes.
Hybrid Approach vs. Full Migration
Before committing to moving everything off Shopify, consider whether a hybrid setup solves the actual problem.
In a hybrid approach, Shopify continues to run your store. WordPress handles your content: blog, landing pages, resource libraries, and anything that isn't a product listing or checkout flow. The two systems coexist on separate subdomains or subdirectories.
This works well when:
- Your Shopify store runs smoothly, and your team knows the platform
- The frustration is specifically about content capabilities, not commerce
- You don't want to take on the complexity of managing WooCommerce
- Your product catalog is large or complex enough that rebuilding it in WooCommerce isn't worth the effort
"Going to a WooCommerce platform to sell a few products is way overkill a lot of times and often done for the wrong reasons."
Full migration to WooCommerce makes sense when:
- Shopify's transaction fees on third-party gateways (up to 2% per transaction) are eating into margins
- You need customization that Shopify's Liquid templating can't deliver
- Data ownership is a strategic priority. You want your customer data, order history, and product catalog in MySQL databases you control.
- Your organization needs tight integration between commerce and content under one platform
What Transfers in a Shopify to WordPress Migration
If you decide to move forward with a full migration, here's what the process looks like.
The S2W plugin handles the core data transfer: products and categories in the free version, with orders, customers, and coupons available in the premium tier. Cart2Cart is another option that preserves 85-95% of structured data and keeps your Shopify store live during the transfer.
Products are the simplest pieces. Simple products, variants, descriptions, images, and categories are captured with reasonable fidelity by automated tools. The mapping isn't always perfect.
Shopify organizes products by collections. WooCommerce uses categories and tags. Shopify product options become WooCommerce attributes and variations. The translation usually works, but every product page needs human verification afterward.
Customer accounts transfer with contact information and order history. Like every platform migration, customers will need to reset their passwords. Their saved payment methods won't carry over.
Plan a communication campaign that explains what's changed and what customers need to do.
Orders transfer for record-keeping purposes. Active subscriptions using Shopify's native subscription tools don't migrate cleanly. You'll need WooCommerce Subscriptions and a manual process to re-establish recurring billing.
Blog posts and pages are straightforward content. These can be exported and imported into WordPress with minimal formatting issues, assuming they weren't built with complex Shopify sections or custom Liquid code.
Data You Lose Permanently
This is the part of migrating from Shopify to WordPress that gets buried in footnotes, if it's mentioned at all.
Analytics history is gone. Not paused. Not archived. Gone. Every conversion trend, every traffic pattern, every seasonal insight you've built up in Shopify's analytics dashboard disappears when you leave the platform.
Your new WooCommerce store launches blind, without the behavioral data you've spent years accumulating. You can export raw data from Shopify before you leave, but the analytical layer (the dashboards, trend lines, and cohort analysis) is tied to Shopify's system.
Abandoned cart data vanishes. If you've been running abandoned cart recovery campaigns, that pipeline stops. The historical data about cart abandonment patterns, recovery rates, and customer behavior is platform-specific and doesn't transfer.
Customer journey insights disappear. The path from first visit to purchase, the touchpoints that led to conversion, and the products that customers browsed before buying. That behavioral intelligence is Shopify's data, not yours. When you leave, it stays.
App-specific data is forfeit. Every Shopify app you've installed has its own data store. Review platforms, loyalty programs, upsell tools, and email marketing integrations. That data belongs to each app's ecosystem. Some apps offer exports. Many don't.
None of this means you shouldn't migrate. It means you should go in with your eyes open. Export everything you can before you start. Pull CSV files from every Shopify report. Screenshot your analytics dashboards. Document your automation workflows.
"I think a lot of people assume that we have some kind of magic export button that's going to streamline the job for us."
There is no magic export button that captures everything. There never is.
Real Cost of a Shopify to WordPress Migration
Professional Shopify to WordPress/WooCommerce migrations range from $1,000 to $10,000, depending on the scope.
A small store with a few dozen products, basic customer accounts, and standard checkout sits at the lower end. An established store with hundreds of products, complex variants, multiple payment gateways, and several integrated Shopify apps sits at the higher end.
The cost drivers people underestimate:
Shopify app replacements. Every Shopify app that powers a feature on your store needs a WooCommerce plugin equivalent. Reviews, loyalty programs, shipping calculators, upsell tools, abandoned cart recovery. Some have direct equivalents. Some don't. Custom development fills the gap, and that's where costs escalate.
Payment gateway reconfiguration. Shopify Payments is tightly integrated. Moving to WooCommerce means setting up a new payment gateway integration, testing it, and ensuring PCI compliance.
If you were using Shopify Payments to avoid the transaction fees charged by third-party gateways, you'll need to evaluate WooCommerce payment options carefully.
Design rebuild. Your Shopify theme doesn't come with you.
"Though we call these migrations, my philosophy is that they're rebuilds. They may be pixel-perfect rebuilds, but they are rebuilds."
The WordPress theme needs to be built from scratch or adapted from an existing theme. Every page template, every product layout, every custom section needs rebuilding. This is often the single largest cost in the migration.
SEO Preservation Is Non-Negotiable
Shopify stores accumulate SEO equity over time. Product pages rank for commercial keywords. Blog posts rank for informational queries. Collection pages rank for category terms. Losing that equity means losing revenue.
Poorly executed migrations often result in a 50% loss of traffic. The average worst-case recovery timeline is 523 days, nearly a year and a half to recover. Only 10% of migrations actually improve SEO performance.
For a commerce site where organic traffic directly drives revenue, these numbers should make you take SEO preservation seriously.
Our process starts before the first product is transferred. We use Screaming Frog to crawl every URL on the existing Shopify store. Every product page, every collection, every blog post, every auto-generated page that Shopify creates. Each one gets mapped to its new WordPress/WooCommerce equivalent.
A single 301 redirect passes approximately 85% of link equity. Chain two redirects, and that percentage compounds, which is why the redirect map needs to be right the first time.
We set redirects via the Redirection plugin or server-level .htaccess rules, not Shopify's built-in redirect feature, which only works while your Shopify subscription is active.
"A migration, though it is a disruption, should only improve SEO."
The manual rebuild actually creates an SEO opportunity. When we build the new WooCommerce site page by page, we fix heading structures, add proper alt tags to images, write missing meta descriptions, and install Yoast SEO from the start. Every product description gets human eyes.
An automated migration would just copy whatever existed, including all the SEO issues. Our WordPress migration checklist covers every step of the SEO preservation process.
Expect a temporary dip in the weeks following launch. Even with perfect redirects, Google recognizes the structural change and re-evaluates. We prepare clients for this and recommend increased marketing activity during that window: email campaigns, social media, and paid advertising to offset the temporary organic decline.
How FatLab Runs a Shopify Migration
We approach Shopify migrations the same way we approach every platform migration.
"We run a very tight scope. We make sure that it is in writing."
The first step is understanding what the store actually does. Not just what's visible on the frontend, but what's running behind it.
"What does your website do? ... Now, do you have any surprises for me? This is the time to tell me that deep inside your website, someone decided that selling T-shirts was a good idea."
For Shopify stores, surprises tend to lie within the app ecosystem. A custom checkout flow powered by a Shopify app. A loyalty program with thousands of enrolled members. A reviews platform with years of customer feedback.
We inventory everything. Products, pages, apps, integrations, custom Liquid code, third-party connections. Then we build a scope document that covers everything. Flat-rate pricing. No surprises.
The current Shopify store is the design scope. We're not redesigning. We're rebuilding pixel-perfect, then migrating content manually with SEO cleanup built into the process.
After Launch: The Part Nobody Talks About
"Once the flip is switched and the new WordPress site is live, that's when we, as a support and maintenance company, thrive."
We keep the old Shopify store open for one to two weeks after launch. This overlap period is essential.
The first time your entire customer base interacts with the new store, things will surface. A product variant that didn't map correctly. A shipping rule that behaves differently. A discount code that doesn't work the way it did on Shopify.
"We like to let that just sit and chill for a few weeks before we start making any major changes."
The stabilization period is when the new store proves itself under real conditions. We monitor SEO performance, watch for 404 errors, verify redirects are working, and handle the inevitable support requests from customers navigating an unfamiliar checkout process.
This is where FatLab's model matters. A migration agency finishes the project and moves on. A hosting company provides infrastructure but not store-level support.
We host, maintain, and support the new WooCommerce store as part of an ongoing relationship. The migration is the on-ramp to that relationship, not a standalone project.
When to Stay on Shopify
We need to be direct about this.
If your Shopify store works, your team is comfortable with the platform, and your frustration is limited to blogging capabilities, a hybrid approach almost always makes more sense than a full migration. Put WordPress alongside Shopify for content. Leave the store alone.
If you're considering WooCommerce because someone told you it's "free," factor in the real costs: managed hosting, security, maintenance, SSL certificates, plugin licensing, and the development time required to match the features Shopify provides out of the box.
"If it's a simple brochure site that doesn't change and is only 10 pages, then you probably shouldn't be hiring a firm like ours."
The same principle applies to simple stores. If Shopify handles your commerce needs and you're not hitting hard limitations, the disruption and expense of migration may not be justified.
The right time for a Shopify to WordPress migration is when the platform's constraints are costing you more than the migration would. That calculation includes transaction fees, customization limitations, data ownership concerns, and the opportunity cost of content marketing on a platform that wasn't built for it. For a broader look at professional migrations, our WordPress migration services overview covers the full process. Learn more about how we can help on our WordPress development services page.