WooCommerce to Shopify Migration Off the update
treadmill
WooCommerce gives you a store you have to maintain: WordPress updates, plugin conflicts, security patches, and hosting that slows down as you grow. Shopify takes all of that off your hands. We move the whole store, products, customers, orders, content and the rankings they carry, with no downtime and nothing left behind.
Why businesses leave WooCommerce
WooCommerce is powerful, and for the right business it's the right tool. But it asks you to run a piece of software as well as a shop. This is what we see when a store comes to us.
The maintenance treadmill
WordPress core, the WooCommerce plugin, your theme and every extension all update on their own schedule, and any one of them can break the others. A PHP version bumps and the store goes white. With WooCommerce, that 3am call is yours. Shopify is fully hosted, so there is nothing to patch and nothing to break overnight.
- No WordPress or PHP updates to manage
- No plugin conflicts taking the store down
You're the hosting company now
With WooCommerce, speed, caching, backups, SSL and PCI compliance are your problem. A store that's fast on launch day crawls once the catalogue and the plugins pile up, and a slow store loses both sales and rankings. Shopify runs on infrastructure built to stay fast at scale, with security and compliance handled for you.
- Hosting, CDN, and backups handled
- PCI compliance and SSL included
Plugin sprawl, hidden costs
"Free" WooCommerce ends up as a stack of paid plugins (subscriptions, bookings, shipping, security, backups), each with its own renewal and its own way of breaking. The real bill is higher than Shopify's and far less predictable. One platform that does the job beats a dozen plugins you have to keep in sync.
- Predictable monthly cost, one platform
- 8,000+ vetted Shopify apps when you need them
How we handle a migration differently
Migration usually gets treated as a data dump. The real work is preserving everything you've built in search, and that takes a migration agency that has done it before, on its own stores as well as its clients'.
Led by our principal, start to finish
Tony Cooper, our principal, leads every migration: the audit, the Shopify build, the data migration, the SEO redirects and the launch, so the decisions that protect your rankings are never relayed through an account manager.
Migrations we have already run
We have moved stores to Shopify from EKM, WooCommerce, Wix and bespoke platforms, and we have seen what goes wrong when a migration is rushed: broken redirects, lost product data, rankings that vanish overnight. That is why we know where the traps are before they cost you money.
SEO is the migration, not an add-on
A botched migration can destroy years of search rankings overnight. We map every URL, transfer every meta title and description, set up every 301 redirect from your WordPress permalinks, and test the lot before the DNS switch. Your Google rankings are the whole point of doing this properly, so our WooCommerce to Shopify migration services are planned with the same discipline as our SEO services.
Advice before a sale
If WooCommerce is serving you well and the maintenance doesn't bother you, we will tell you to stay put; exactly when that is the right call is set out in WooCommerce vs Shopify. If a simpler ecommerce build would suit you better than Shopify, we will recommend that instead. We would rather give you the right advice than sell you a migration you don't need.
Our own money on the same decision
Why we left WordPress ourselves
We spent years on WordPress: the updates that broke things that worked yesterday, the plugins stacked on plugins, the subscriptions that never stopped. We moved our own business off it onto a modern stack, and we build client stores on Shopify and Astro for the same reason. The recommendation is the road we took ourselves.
Read the full WordPress to Shopify migration guideHow we migrate a WooCommerce store
Your WooCommerce store stays live and taking orders throughout. The Shopify store is built alongside it, tested, then switched over.
Audit the WooCommerce store
We go through every product, page, plugin and integration. The plugins matter most: we document exactly what each one does, so the Shopify build replaces the function as well as the data.
Build on Shopify
Your new store is built on a development URL. Theme, payments, shipping and tax are all configured and tested while your WooCommerce site keeps trading.
Migrate and redirect
Products, customers, orders and content move across. Every WordPress URL gets a 301 redirect to its Shopify equivalent, and the metadata transfers with it.
Launch and train
Full testing, then the DNS switch, which takes minutes. We monitor the first 48 hours and train your team on the Shopify admin until they are confident in it.
Everything migrates
WooCommerce exports cleanly, so nothing gets left behind. This is what transfers to Shopify.
Products & Orders
Titles, descriptions, pricing, images, variants, SKUs, stock levels, and full order history. All verified after transfer.
Customers
Names, emails, addresses, purchase history. Accounts ready for login on your new Shopify store.
SEO & Content
Page titles, meta descriptions, blog posts, 301 redirects for every WordPress URL, sitemaps submitted to Google.
Plus: collections and categories, content pages, reviews, and the functionality behind your plugins. We identify every WooCommerce extension you use and configure the best Shopify equivalent, tested before launch.
WooCommerce to Shopify Migration Pricing
The cost is published here. Migration is included in the Shopify build, not charged on top.
Shopify Build + Migration
Complete store build with full WooCommerce migration
one-off, fixed price
- Custom Shopify theme design
- Full WooCommerce data extraction and transfer
- SEO redirect mapping for every URL
- Payment and shipping integration
- Mobile responsive design
- Training and 30 days support
Spread the Cost
Same build, same migration — paid monthly
no big upfront cost
- Same custom Shopify build
- Same full WooCommerce migration
- Same SEO redirect mapping
- Ongoing support included
- No lock-in contract
- SEO foundations included
Not sure the move is right for you?
Not every WooCommerce store needs to move. If your current site is working and the maintenance isn't costing you sleep, we will say so. Call us on 07963 242210 or get in touch for a free assessment of whether Shopify is the right move.
WooCommerce to Shopify migration: your questions
The questions buyers put to us before the first call.
/product/, /product-category/, /shop/. Shopify uses /products/ and /collections/. The critical work is a 301 redirect from every old URL to its Shopify equivalent, with all your meta titles and descriptions carried across and updated sitemaps submitted to Google. The part that gets skipped is testing every redirect before the DNS switch: a single missed redirect on a high-traffic product page can undo months of SEO work. Read the full WordPress and WooCommerce migration guide, or how migration SEO works for the baseline-and-redirect discipline behind it.Related services
The work before, during and after the migration
Shopify Migration Services
Every platform we migrate from, the six-step sequence we run, and the fixed price from £2,490.
Learn more →Shopify Website Design
Our platform of choice for ecommerce. Custom Shopify stores from £2,490, with payments, shipping and inventory set up properly.
Learn more →Ecommerce Website Design
Not sure which platform you need? We build ecommerce sites on Shopify and Astro, and we will tell you which one fits your business.
Learn more →SEO Services
Protect and grow your search rankings after migration. Technical SEO, content strategy, and keyword targeting from £330/month.
Learn more →5 stars from 14 Google reviews
What clients say about the work, in their own words.
"I originally reached out to Tony to help with SEO but unfortunately my website crashed to a point where I thought it was beyond repair. I was panicking and didn't know what to do when Tony asked if I would allow him to help me recover my website. After a very long few weeks I got a message from Tony telling me my website is back up and running."
Salma Sanji
Sals Forever Flowers
23 Aug 2025
"Tony from webuild stores was a pleasure to work with. He seemed to understand what I needed even when I didn't. He was patient, polite and professional. He really went the 'extra mile' in finding a solution to a particular issue I had."
Lee Hinton
Atlantic Rubber
5 Apr 2025
"I have been working with Tony for over 10 years. He's encouraged us to embrace and keep abreast of the latest techniques for promoting our business. Tony & his team have become an essential component of our marketing efforts."
David See
Jana Helps
16 Jun 2026
"I've had a great experience working with Tony. He was professional, efficient and understood what I needed. Communication was clear throughout and the result exceeded my expectations. Highly recommended!"
Jeremy Webster
Marbles PR
29 Mar 2025
"Have used Tony and his team for years, great service fantastic value for money, highly recommend!"
Matthew Lauchlan
4 Jun 2021
"Very good work from the moment we joined. We'll continue working with Tony for copywriting!"
Míriam Vélez Mañas
7 Oct 2021
Tell us what the website has to do for the business
Call us, or set out what you need below. Every enquiry is read by Tony Cooper, our principal.
Before we speak, Tony reads your site against what you want to be found for, so the first call starts with what we found. We answer every enquiry within 24 hours on working days.
07963 242210