WooCommerce to Shopify Migration: What Breaks and How to Keep SEO

The data move is the part vendors talk about most, and it's rarely where migrations go wrong. The trouble usually sits in the edges: a subscription base nobody planned for, product options that don't fit Shopify's model, or a WooCommerce URL structure that loses rankings when redirects are rushed.

Shopify's own WooCommerce migration guide lists the routes: its Store Migration app (in early access as of September 2026), CSV imports for products and customers, third-party apps from the Shopify App Store for data such as historical orders, and hiring a Shopify Partner. Most stores use a mix, because no single tool handles every data type.

One structural limit to check before anything else: the same guide notes that Shopify allows 3 product options, and products with more than 3 won't have their options imported. If your WooCommerce catalog uses four or more attributes on a product, decide how to restructure it before the first test import.

A migration costs time, money and some short-term search visibility. It's worth asking whether the problem you want to solve is really the platform.

WooCommerce is still a reasonable fit when your store is mainly a content site with a shop attached, when your business depends on custom plugins that would be expensive to rebuild, or when you want full control of hosting and data. Shopify tends to fit better when plugin updates, hosting and security patches are eating your team's time, or when you want a hosted checkout and a larger app ecosystem without running servers.

Use this matrix to scope the project before you request quotes. Every 'needs a workaround' row is a line item, and quotes that ignore those rows aren't cheaper, just incomplete.

Passwords first. The Shopify Help Center is direct about it: because passwords are encrypted outside Shopify, you can't migrate them from another online store with a CSV. The older answer was to invite every imported customer to set a new password. With Shopify's current customer accounts, shoppers enter their email and receive a one-time 6-digit code, so a password isn't needed at all. Either way, tell customers before launch so the change doesn't look like a security problem.

Subscriptions need more care, because WooCommerce Subscriptions renews orders by charging payment methods saved at your gateway. Those saved cards have to be linked to the new Shopify customer records, or renewals stop.

Shopify's subscription migration guide for developers lists four supported gateways: Stripe, Braintree, PayPal Express and Authorize.net. Each must be connected as a secondary gateway, PayPal requires approval for reference transactions, and Braintree migration covers credit cards and Apple Pay only. Customer records need an email address, first name and last name. If your subscriptions bill through another gateway, plan for subscribers to re-enter payment details, and confirm with your subscriptions app vendor what they can import.

Shopify's URL structure is fixed, so most WooCommerce URLs change. According to WooCommerce's permalink documentation, products default to /product/product-name, categories to /product-category/name and tags to /product-tag/name. On Shopify, products live under /products/, collections under /collections/, pages under /pages/ and posts under /blogs/ followed by the blog handle. Shopify's default blog is called News, so posts usually end up at /blogs/news/post-name.

Google's site move guidance recommends permanent redirects such as 301 or 308, kept for as long as possible and generally at least one year. It also warns against sending many old URLs to one irrelevant page such as the home page, which can be treated as a soft 404. If you're worried about Shopify creating several URLs for one product, read our note on Shopify duplicate content from collection URLs before you build the map.

Export your list of active WordPress plugins and put each one in one of four buckets: a native Shopify feature, a Shopify app, custom code, or no longer needed. The last bucket is usually bigger than people expect, and every app you skip is one less script on your product pages.

Two plugin types deserve special attention. SEO plugins store your custom page titles and meta descriptions in their own fields, so confirm your migration tool maps them to Shopify's SEO title and description fields; otherwise search snippets fall back to defaults on launch day. Review plugins hold years of customer content, and Shopify's guide says WooCommerce reviews can't be exported or migrated directly, only imported through a third-party app. Export them with SKUs or product slugs so the app can match each review to the right product.

Be strict about custom code. Store-specific logic, such as a pricing rule or an ERP sync, may justify a small custom app. Cosmetic features rarely do, and a theme section your team can edit is usually the better answer.

Settings don't migrate. Shopify's migration checklist walks through payment providers, shipping, taxes and store policies as separate setup steps, followed by test orders. It also reminds merchants that tax compliance is their own responsibility: Shopify calculates taxes but doesn't file or remit them unless you use Shopify Tax's automated filing.

Rebuild shipping zones and rates from your WooCommerce settings, not from memory, and compare a handful of real past orders to make sure the new rates match. Do the same for tax: take several recent orders from different states and check that Shopify calculates the same totals.

Most of the migration happens before launch day through test imports. Cutover is about moving the last changes and switching traffic with as little overlap as possible.

Google's site move documentation says to expect temporary fluctuation in rankings during a move, and that for medium-sized sites it can take a few weeks or more for Google to start showing the new URLs. A dip in week two isn't a verdict. A dip that's still growing at day 60 is.

If traffic falls more than you expected, work through the causes in order: redirects, indexing, then content that changed. Our guide to a website traffic drop after a redesign covers the diagnosis step by step.

Catalog size matters less than people think. The bigger drivers are data complexity, subscriptions and how much of the store is being redesigned at the same time. Treat the list below as the scope questions to answer before anyone gives you a number, and see our breakdown of Shopify developer rates for how different providers price the work.

At Pixel2Tech we handle WooCommerce to Shopify moves as part of our WordPress and Shopify work, from data mapping and redirects to theme setup. The checklist below is the same one we'd send you before quoting.