Migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify - 2025 Guide

WooCommerce vs Shopify: How is the market changing?

The popularity of WooCommerce and Shopify is measured in several ways: the number of active stores, market share and sales value. In terms of the number of installations, WooCommerce still holds the lead, but Shopify is catching up dynamically - especially among stores with higher sales volume.

The growth of Shopify is evident when we look at the data from the last five years:

What follows from this data?

WooCommerce stopped at a stable level of ~4.5 million stores, but its growth momentum slowed down noticeably. Meanwhile, Shopify has doubled the number of active installs since 2021 — suggesting it's a platform eagerly chosen by growth-stage businesses. The reason? Simplified SaaS model, no need for server management and rich integration backend.

For many mid-sized businesses, Shopify is becoming a natural migration direction - especially if they want to scale their sales without an extensive IT backend.

Why do companies opt out of WooCommerce?

1. Increasing operational complexity

WooCommerce gives you almost complete control over the code and configuration, but it also requires full responsibility: hosting, updates, backups, security and technical support. For growing companies that do not maintain their own IT teams, this is an increasing burden.

2. Hidden costs in the open source model

Although WooCommerce is free, its full implementation often exceeds the cost of a Shopify subscription. Here is an example of monthly expenses for a store with average traffic:

3. Safety and Compliance

Shopify is a PCI DSS (Payment Card Data Security Standard) compliant platform that is regularly tested and updated. WooCommerce requires you to take care of compliance and security on your own, which in the event of a data leak can mean thousands of losses.

When should you consider migration?

Migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The decision should be preceded by a technological audit and an operational analysis. The cases in which migration makes the most sense:

• Your store grows faster than the technical infrastructure
• WooCommerce Maintenance Costs Grow Exponentially
• Your SEO suffers from performance issues
• The team needs a more intuitive platform
• Want to simplify billing, shipping and marketing

How is the migration process going?

Store migration is not just a transfer of products - it is an operation on a living organism that requires planning, coordination and testing. Below, we present a five-step diagram of the safe transition from WooCommerce to Shopify.

Stage 1: Technical and operational audit

At this stage, we identify the key components of the current store:

• Category structure and navigation
• Number of products and their variants
• Order history and customer accounts
• Integrations with ERP, CRM, email tools and payments
• SEO content (URLs, meta tags, blog)

The goal is to determine which elements need a full migration and which can be built from scratch.

Step 2: Choosing migration tools

The most commonly used solutions:

• Matrixify (formerly Excelify) - a powerful tool for export/import of data, used by agencies.
• LiteExtension - friendly application for smaller stores, supporting automatic migration.
• Cart2Cart - allows partial migration without the need to interfere with the code.
• Shopify Transporter - free Shopify tool, works only with properly prepared CSV files.

It is also worth building a staging site - a test store on Shopify, to test the data before publishing it.

Step 3: Data Migration

• Products, customers, orders - are imported using CSV or API.
• Content pages - they need to be played manually or semi-automatically. Shopify does not support WordPress shortcodes.
• Médias - Shopify optimizes images automatically, but their alt-texts need to be re-entered.
• Blogg - import from WordPress possible using the BlogFeeder application or by manually copying the content.

Step 4: SEO and redirects

This is the most critical moment. In order not to lose your position in Google:

• We create a complete map of old and new URLs
• We implement redirects 301 (e.g. /product/sweatshirt-blue → /products/sweatshirt-blue)
• We make sure that metadata, descriptions and headers are preserved
• We set a new sitemap (sitemap.xml) and report it in Google Search Console

Stage 5: Testing and publication

Before starting the store, it is worth doing:

• A/B Checkouts and Payments
• Responsiveness testing (mobile and desktop)
• Simulations of large traffic and orders
• Verification of Google Analytics and marketing integrations

On the day of publication, it is best to:

• pause new orders on WooCommerce,
• transfer domain DNS to Shopify,
• monitor traffic in real time for the first 24-48 hours.

The most common mistakes when migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify

Migration is not only a technical project, but also an operational and marketing project. Here are the most common pitfalls that can affect sales, SEO, and customer comfort:

1. No 301 redirects

This is the most serious SEO mistake that can result in the loss of organic traffic. If the old address /product/leather-bag will not be redirected to a new /products/leather-bag, Google will treat it as an error page.

2. “Live” migration, no test environment

Publishing a store without prior testing (checkout, integrations, email) often ends with errors that customers see. A stagnant environment is a necessity, not a luxury.

3. Ignoring customers and order history

Migrating customer data without passwords (Shopify doesn't allow you to import them securely) requires communication with users. A good practice is to send an email campaign with a link to reset your password after migration.

4. Turning off WooCommerce too fast

Closing the old store before fully testing the new support and order handling system is a risk. It is recommended to keep WooCommerce for 2-4 weeks in read-only mode as an archive.

When is Shopify not the ideal choice?

While Shopify is one of the most powerful SaaS tools on the market, there are situations where its choice can be limiting:

• Complex Customizable Products: If your products require custom calculations or multiple dependent fields, WooCommerce (or even Magento) may be a better choice.
• Full integration with WordPress: If your store is part of a larger content service (such as an education or social media portal), Shopify doesn't provide that seamless integration.
• Own development team: if you have a dev team and need full control over the source code, open-source will be more flexible.
• Transaction fees: Shopify charges additional commissions if you don't use Shopify Payments (not available in Poland, for example). For some companies, this is a barrier.

Summary: Migration as a strategic decision

Migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify is much more than a platform change - it's a change in your store management model. In exchange for less technological flexibility, you get more stability, automation, cost simplification and better time to focus on sales.

For most medium-sized businesses in 2025, Shopify is more profitable than WooCommerce - both financially and operationally. But the success of migration depends on two things: a good plan and the awareness that not everything can be moved 1:1.

Want to talk about migrating your store? Contact the Hilvec Team - we help to carry out the entire process from A to Z, safely, consciously and with SEO in mind.