WooCommerce to Shopify migration (or reverse): cost and process

Migrating an online store between WooCommerce and Shopify is not a button you press — it's a data-and-SEO project with a real budget attached. Done well, it's invisible to customers and keeps your search rankings intact. Done badly, it drops you 40 pages of 404s and a quarter of your organic traffic. This guide covers when a move actually makes sense, what breaks, the realistic cost, and how to do it safely.

When (and when not) to migrate

Most migrations are triggered by pain, not ambition. Common, legitimate reasons to leave WooCommerce for Shopify:

• You're spending more time on maintenance than selling. Plugin conflicts, hosting, security patches and PHP updates are eating your week.
• Performance and uptime are unreliable, especially during traffic spikes or sales.
• You need hosted, PCI-compliant checkout without assembling it yourself.

Reasons people migrate the other way, from Shopify to WooCommerce:

• You want full ownership of code, data and hosting, with no platform transaction fees.
• You need deep customisation or content-heavy publishing (WooCommerce sits on WordPress).
• Monthly platform costs don't fit your margins at your volume.

A word of caution: migrating to escape a problem you could fix cheaply is expensive. If your WooCommerce store is just slow, better hosting and a caching layer may solve it for a fraction of a full rebuild. Work out the real all-in cost of each path before committing — our build-vs-buy TCO calculator is built for exactly this comparison, and our sibling piece on Shopify vs WooCommerce vs custom breaks down the trade-offs by business type.

What actually breaks

The three things that reliably go wrong are URLs, data mapping and functionality parity.

URLs and SEO. This is where migrations succeed or fail. Shopify uses a fixed URL structure — every product lives under /products/ and every category under /collections/, with no nested hierarchy. WooCommerce URLs are fully customisable, so your existing paths almost never match. Every old URL that changes without a matching redirect becomes a 404, losing that page's rankings and backlinks. The fix is a complete set of 301 redirects mapping every old URL to its new one — products, collections, blog posts, and the pages people forget: About, FAQ, shipping and returns policies, contact pages. A single blog post with dozens of referring domains is a meaningful loss if it 404s. [Source: Cart2Cart, Shopify Help Center]

One Shopify quirk to plan around: its redirects only fire on URLs that are genuinely broken, and you cannot redirect collection-tag filter URLs (e.g. /collections/name/tag), because Shopify treats those paths as valid.

Data. Products, variants, images, customers, orders and reviews all need mapping between two different schemas. Product variants, tax settings, customer passwords (which usually can't transfer for security reasons) and order history are the usual trouble spots. Passwords not migrating means customers must reset on first login — plan the email for it.

Functionality. Anything a WooCommerce plugin did — subscriptions, bookings, B2B pricing, custom fields — has to be rebuilt with a Shopify app or custom code. This is where budgets balloon, because you're not moving data, you're re-implementing features.

The step-by-step process

1. Audit and inventory. List every product, page, plugin/app, integration and URL. Export your current URL list from Google Search Console — it's your redirect checklist.
2. Set up the destination. Create the new store, choose a theme, and rebuild navigation and key content pages.
3. Migrate data. Move products, customers and orders — either with a migration app (Cart2Cart, Matrixify and similar) for standard catalogues, or with custom scripts for complex or large stores.
4. Rebuild functionality. Replace each plugin's job with the equivalent app or code, and re-do payment, shipping and tax configuration.
5. Map redirects. Build the full old-to-new 301 map. Avoid redirect chains — each old URL should point straight at its final destination.
6. Test on a staging URL. Check checkout end to end, tax and shipping maths, mobile layout, and a sample of redirects.
7. Cut over and monitor. Point the domain, submit the new sitemap, and watch Search Console for crawl errors and 404 spikes for at least a few weeks.

Keep the old store live and untouched until the new one is verified — it's your rollback.

Realistic cost

There's no single number, because cost scales with catalogue size and how much custom functionality you're rebuilding. Reported 2025–2026 agency ranges (quoted in USD; treat as rough EUR equivalents):

• Small, standard store (under ~1,000 products, default theme, few plugins): roughly $500–$2,500.
• Moderately customised store (custom theme, several integrations, larger catalogue): roughly $2,500–$8,000.
• Complex or enterprise (subscriptions, B2B, multi-store, heavy custom code): $8,000–$25,000+, and engineering-led projects can run higher.

Add-ons to budget for: a premium theme (around $150–$400 plus customisation), and subscription-migration scripting (~$500–$2,000) if you have active subscribers. Freelancer and agency hourly rates typically run $100–$400+ depending on seniority and location. [Sources: Shopify Agency Directory, shopexperts, ShopExperts pricing guide]

Then there's the ongoing platform cost, which is easy to forget. In the EU, Shopify's plans are Basic €27/mo (€19 billed annually), Grow €74/mo (€56 annual) and Advanced €384/mo (€289 annual). If you don't use Shopify Payments, a third-party gateway adds a transaction fee of 2% / 1% / 0.6% by plan. WooCommerce has no platform fee but shifts cost to hosting, plugins and maintenance. [Source: shopify.com/pricing]

Because the sticker price of the migration is only part of the story, model the full picture — migration plus two or three years of running costs — before you decide. That's exactly what the build-vs-buy TCO calculator is for, and it fits into the bigger question of how much a website costs in 2026.

Do it safely

• Never migrate live. Build and test on staging; only cut over when checkout and redirects pass.
• Redirects are non-negotiable. Map every indexed URL before launch, not after traffic drops.
• Keep the old store as a backup until the new one is proven.
• Warn customers about password resets and any brief maintenance window.
• Monitor Search Console for 404s and ranking dips for the first month.

Getting help

A migration is one of those jobs where a few days of careful planning saves months of lost traffic. If you'd rather not learn Shopify's URL quirks the hard way, see our web development service — we handle the data mapping, redirect strategy and functionality rebuild end to end. Not sure a move is even worth it? Book a free consultation and we'll pressure-test the case before you spend a euro.