Migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify is very doable, but the word “migrate” undersells what the job actually is. Product and customer data transfers, but blog posts, product reviews, theme files, metafields and customer passwords do not, and every product and category URL changes in the move. The real work is rebuilding the parts that do not transfer and redirecting the URLs that do, so the store keeps its search rankings and its customers along the way.
This guide is the honest version of that job for Australian small businesses. Most guides you will find are written by migration-tool vendors who only pitch the automated import and stop there. This one covers the three things that decide whether a migration protects you or costs you: what actually moves, how to protect your SEO with redirects, and a phased plan that keeps the old store safe until the new one is verified. If you have not yet decided between the two platforms, our guide to choosing between Shopify and WooCommerce settles that decision first. This article assumes the decision is made and you need the migration done properly.
Key Takeaways
- A WooCommerce-to-Shopify move is a rebuild plus a redirect job, not a one-click import. Products and customers transfer; blogs, reviews, theme files, metafields and customer passwords do not.
- Every product and category URL changes because Shopify’s URL structure is fixed. You must build and import a per-URL 301 map, or you lose the rankings and external links attached to your old URLs.
- Shopify’s free Store Migration app handles the basics on a small store; larger stores usually add a paid migration app (Shopify’s own WooCommerce guide names LitExtension and Matrixify) for orders, reviews and metafields.
- Budget for the re-buy: every WooCommerce extension you rely on needs a Shopify equivalent, often as a monthly subscription, and your payment fees change with Shopify Payments rates by plan.
- Run it as phases with a verification step before cutover, and keep the old store live until the new one is proven.
Should You Migrate at All?
Before you touch any data, answer the honest first question: is the reason to move durable? Migrating is worth the cost and risk when something about staying on WooCommerce is genuinely costing you, such as the maintenance burden, security upkeep, or a feature ceiling you keep hitting. If the store is small, WordPress works fine, and the only reason to move is that Shopify feels more popular, the disruption of a migration may cost more than it saves.
Migrating usually makes sense when you are tired of maintaining WordPress and WooCommerce yourself, when every update or security patch means paying a developer, or when you have hit the limits of what your plugin stack can do. It usually does not make sense for a small catalogue with no recurring pain, or when you rely on many paid WooCommerce extensions that you would have to buy again as Shopify apps. Our guide to Shopify versus WooCommerce covers the full decision, including which platform suits which kind of business. If the reasons there point to Shopify for your situation, the rest of this guide is the how.
What Migrates and What Does Not
The single most useful thing to know before you start is exactly which data types transfer natively and which need a manual rebuild or a paid app. Shopify’s migration documentation is explicit about this, and the surprises are almost always the same ones. The table below summarises what Shopify’s own migration guidance says moves and what does not, current as of the retrieval date.
| What you have in WooCommerce | Does it migrate natively? |
|---|---|
| Products, including variants (up to 3 options) | Yes: via the Store Migration app or CSV import |
| Collections (categories) and product images | Yes: CSV import |
| Customers | Yes, with a catch: the data moves but passwords do not, so customers must reset them |
| Historical orders | Mostly no: a job for third-party migration apps, not the free importer |
| Coupons and discounts | Not natively: recreate them in Shopify |
| Blog posts and pages | Not natively: recreate manually or re-enter them |
| Theme files | Not transferable: rebuild the design on a Shopify theme |
| Metafields (custom fields) | Not natively: manual work or apps |
| Product reviews | Not natively: third-party apps only (Judge.me, Loox, Yotpo and similar) |
| Product options beyond 3 | Dropped: Shopify imports a maximum of three options per product |
This summary follows Shopify’s guide to migrating to Shopify and the dedicated migrating from WooCommerce page, retrieved 2026-09-03. The two surprises that catch most store owners are customer passwords (everyone must reset, so plan an email and expect some customers to stumble) and the design itself (your WooCommerce theme does not transfer, so the new store will not look like the old one until you rebuild it on a Shopify theme). Product reviews are the third: they carry real social proof, and moving them means choosing a reviews app and importing through it.
For the cost of the store you are moving to, including the subscription and what a rebuild adds, see our guide to Shopify store costs in Australia.
What It Really Costs to Migrate
Beyond the Shopify subscription, a migration has three real costs: the rebuild work, the paid migration app if you need orders or reviews moved, and re-buying the WooCommerce extensions you rely on as Shopify apps, many of which are monthly subscriptions rather than one-off purchases. None of these appear in a migration-tool vendor’s “import your store” pitch.
Shopify’s subscription is the predictable part. As listed on Shopify’s Australian site, Basic is from A$56 a month (A$42 a month paid annually), Grow is A$149 and Advanced is A$575 (Shopify pricing, Australia, retrieved 2026-09-03). Most small stores fit on Basic or Grow. The migration itself can be free on a small store: Shopify’s own Store Migration app, built by Shopify, imports products and customers from WooCommerce at no cost (retrieved 2026-09-03). When orders, reviews or metafields matter, Shopify’s WooCommerce guide points to paid third-party apps such as LitExtension and Matrixify, which charge by the number of records or store size.
The cost most guides hide is the app re-buy. Every WooCommerce extension you depend on, from email marketing to shipping labels to loyalty, needs a Shopify equivalent, and Shopify apps typically charge a monthly fee. Our guide to choosing Shopify apps for a small business walks through which apps are worth keeping and which to skip, so you do not rebuild a bloated stack on the new platform. Transaction fees also change: Shopify Payments online card rates are 1.75% plus 30 cents on Basic, 1.60% on Grow and 1.40% on Advanced (same pricing page, retrieved 2026-09-03), which may differ from the gateway you used on WooCommerce, so it is worth running the numbers on your margin before you commit.
This is the single most important step in the whole migration. If you do nothing else yourself, do this. Our local SEO guide for Adelaide businesses covers the foundations that keep a store visible after a platform move, including why preserving your existing URLs matters for the local searches that bring in nearby customers.
The Step-by-Step Migration Playbook
A safe migration is a sequence of phases, each with a verification step before you move to the next, not a single import-and-flip moment. The order below follows Shopify’s own recommended sequence, which is to import products first, then customers, then historical orders. Work through it and keep your old store live until the new one has passed its checks.
Phase 1: Audit what you actually have
List your products, variants, customers, orders, blog posts, reviews and metafields, and note every plugin you rely on. For each plugin, find the Shopify app that replaces it and check the price, because the re-buy is where budgets blow out. This audit is also where you decide whether you need a paid migration app at all: if you have many orders or reviews you want to keep, plan for one.
Phase 2: Build the new store shell
Choose a Shopify theme (your WooCommerce theme does not transfer), set up Shopify Payments for Australia, configure your shipping rates, and set your prices to display the way Australian customers expect. Do not add products yet; the shell should be ready to receive them.
Phase 3: Import in the right order
Using the Store Migration app or your paid migration app, import products first, then customers, then historical orders, following the order Shopify recommends in its migration guide. Check a sample of each after import: a few products with their variants and images, a couple of customers, and that your product options beyond three were not silently dropped.
Phase 4: Recreate what does not import
Rebuild your blog posts and pages, bring reviews across through a reviews app, and handle metafields manually or with an app. This is the phase most people underestimate, because it is real content work rather than a technical import.
Phase 5: Prepare the redirect map and the password email
Build and import the 301 map from the URL section above. Prepare a clear email telling customers their password needs resetting, and schedule it so it lands around cutover rather than weeks before. Test that a few of your most valuable old URLs now redirect to the right new pages.
Phase 6: Connect your domain and go live
Connect your existing domain, such as your .com.au, to the new store, set it as the primary domain, and let Shopify issue the SSL certificate automatically. DNS changes can take hours to a day or two to propagate, so do this at a quiet time and do not delete the old store until the new one is confirmed working.
Phase 7: Verify after launch
Test a real checkout end to end, confirm shipping rates calculate correctly, check that your redirects return the right pages rather than 404s, and make sure the password-reset email arrives. Keep the old WooCommerce store available until you are confident, then take it down or leave it parked.
If you would rather have the whole job done for you, our Adelaide ecommerce website design guide covers what a professional build involves, and we run Shopify migrations as part of our Shopify development services.
Australian-Specifics: GST, Payments and Shipping
Moving platforms does not change your GST obligations. If you are registered for GST, or your turnover has passed the GST registration threshold, you still charge, collect and report GST exactly as before, just configured in the new admin. The one thing to get right in Shopify is how prices display: Australian consumers expect prices shown inclusive of GST, so set that in your Shopify tax settings rather than leaving prices exclusive and surprising customers at checkout.
Payments deserve a specific look because your per-sale cost can change. If you move to Shopify Payments, you pay Shopify’s card rates, which vary by plan (1.75% plus 30 cents on Basic, down to 1.40% on Advanced, as listed on Shopify’s Australian pricing page, retrieved 2026-09-03). That may be higher or lower than the gateway you used on WooCommerce, so compare the two on your average order value before you switch, and remember the margin impact is on every sale.
Shipping is a rebuild rather than a migration. Your WooCommerce shipping rules and carrier setup do not transfer, so you will configure your rates again in Shopify, whether that is flat rates or carrier-calculated shipping. Confirm how your delivery provider integrates before you commit, because the exact integration path affects whether your rates calculate automatically or need to be entered as flat amounts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I migrate from WooCommerce to Shopify myself?
Yes, on a small store. Shopify’s free Store Migration app imports products and customers from WooCommerce, and the phased plan in this guide covers the rest. If you have many historical orders, product reviews or custom metafields you want to keep, you will usually need a paid migration app or a professional to run it, because those do not transfer through the free importer.
Will I lose my SEO or Google rankings when I move?
Only if you skip the redirects. Because Shopify cannot reproduce WooCommerce’s URL structure, every product and category URL changes, and old URLs return 404 unless you redirect them. Build a per-URL 301 map for your money pages and import it in Shopify before you switch the domain. Our Shopify versus WooCommerce guide covers how the two platforms compare on SEO more broadly.
Do my customers have to create new passwords?
Yes. Customer data migrates, but passwords do not transfer between the platforms, so every customer needs to reset their password on the new store. Email them to expect this around the cutover date and make the reset flow easy, and expect a few customers to need help or to simply create a new account.
Does my WooCommerce theme work on Shopify?
No. Themes are platform-specific, so your WooCommerce theme cannot be reused on Shopify. You rebuild the design on a Shopify theme, either a free theme from Shopify or a paid one, which is why the design is one of the parts of the move that never “just transfers.”
How long does a WooCommerce-to-Shopify migration take?
For a small store with a modest catalogue, a careful DIY migration can take a few days to a couple of weeks once you include rebuilding pages and testing. A larger store with many orders, reviews, metafields and a big redirect map typically takes weeks. The phased plan in this guide keeps the old store live until the new one is verified, so the timeline is set by how much content you need to rebuild, not by the data import itself.
Conclusion
A WooCommerce-to-Shopify migration is a rebuild plus a redirect job, and the three things that decide whether it protects you or costs you are the data table, the 301 map and the phased plan. Know what does not transfer, redirect every URL that carries ranking or links, and keep the old store live until the new one passes its checks. Do that and you move your store without moving the risk. If you would like help planning or running the migration, our Adelaide team builds and migrates Shopify stores with transparent scoping and bilingual English and Chinese support. See our Shopify development services or talk to us about your store.
