How to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce?
The number of people migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce is sky-rocketing day by day.
The reason is simple.
While Shopify is the best platform for beginner marketers, it actually limits the freedom of possibilities.
WooCommerce is free and versatile as it let you design your shop endlessly.
That’s why people are migrating gradually.
If you think migrating a site is a big deal, you are wrong!
There’s only a couple of steps to perform site migration.
While we are showing you how to migrate Shopify to WooCommerce, let us add some more info as well.
Why WooCommerce is Better Than Shopify
There’s a vast difference between WooCommerce & Shopify in terms of features.
We have to admit that the Shopify platform provides the best guideline for beginners.
As someone climbs up the ladder, he will see more and more limitations in Shopify.
One of the reasons is Shopify puts more restrictions upon reaching a certain height that hinders the future development of your online store.
WooCommerce instead gives you the freedom to expand as much as you like without any hindrance.
The only downside may be that WooCommerce doesn’t give proper customer support.
You develop an online store in WooCommerce and you are on your own.
Still, there are more reasons why people opt to migrate Shopify to WooCommerce.
Control Over Assets
WooCommerce is an open-source platform and that’s why you can tweak it on your own.
All the elements, widgets, features in WooCommerce can be changed & modified at the user’s will.
In a word, you can build your site from scratch in the way you like.
On the other hand, Shopify will let you choose your site layout according to their inventory.
There’s not much you can do to make a custom layout of your shop.
SEO Ranking Factors
Another reason to migrate Shopify to WooCommerce is the site ranking & SEO.
Shopify has a fixed algorithm that doesn’t really contribute much to SEO.
There are always complaints and stuff.
But WooCommerce works differently.
As WordPress & WooCommerce are integrated, all SEO booter plugins can be used here.
Also, you can break content into SEO fragments in WooCommerce that you can’t do in Shopify.
Overall, WooCommerce has a better SEO structure.
Choice of Payment Gateways
Shopify supports some major payment gateways like Paypal, Skrill, etc.
The fun fact is, the number of those gateways is very limited here.
If you need any uncommon payment gateways for your purpose, you can’t do that with Shopify.
That’s why when you migrate Shopify to WooCommerce, you can enjoy unbound payment gateway choices.
Yes, you can pick anything in WooCommerce.
Security & Backups
Your site security comes first as it is one of the most important things for an online shop.
Shopify, of course, offers better site security if we are talking about management.
The basic site security is already good and you can pick additional plugins for that too.
But, the downside is, the cost goes higher & higher in Shopify and backups cost more for each turn.
WooCommerce, on the other hand, lets you add better security plugins for cheap.
As you are responsible for your own security, WooCommerce gets a little tough if you have no security plans.
Contrary to that, WooCommerce has a ton of free backup plugins that will cost you nothing.
They are reliable and only a few costs for automatic backup operations.
If we name some of the backup plugins, they are:
Unlimited Customizations
WooCommerce & WordPress both are open-source platforms.
So, you can actually enjoy a limitless customization experience.
You can pick any theme, go with any support plugin, customize the shop layout, or go with any payment methods you want.
Even the theme you pick can be customized.
On the other hand, Shopify has a stern layout that doesn’t offer user customizations as a whole.
Of course, you can customize your shop in Shopify, but it has to be with their templates.
That’s a reason to migrate Shopify to WooCommerce.
Cost of Site
Pricing plays a greater impact between Shopify & WooCommerce.
Basically, you can’t use Shopify without purchasing a license.
For WooCommerce, you don’t pay anything.
Calculating the total cost from creating an online shop to shipping products, Shopify costs as high as $300/month for small businesses.
People using WooCommerce hardly spend $100/year for this kind of setting.
Even though they only need to pay for the shipping.
It’s a difference of $3000 to $100 compared to Shopify with WooCommerce.
So, people want to migrate Shopify to WooCommerce to save expenditure.
Community Engagement
The online community is where people usually gather around, doing this & that, solving problems, etc.
When a community is filled with experts, you can get help from them if you are stuck in something.
WordPress has the biggest online community in the world with more than a billion people.
As WooCommerce is a part of WordPress development, you can get huge benefits from the community of people.
Shopify, on the other hand, has no such big gathering and hardly involves in social activity.
If you are stuck in Shopify, only customer service can help.
That’s another reason for us to migrate Shopify to WooCommerce.
Migrate Shopify to WooCommerce
Enough with the introductions. Let’s talk about the procedure of migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce.
There are two ways you can migrate your site from Shopify.
- Manually
- Automatically with plugin
As you just have to move your products on a different platform, there are no complicated steps involved.
Moving product means the product detail, shipping, sale log, pending log, etc.
It involves the complete migration of the store product system, leaving just the page designs.
Now, let’s do that step by step.
Manual Product Migration
For manual product migration, you have to work a little.
It’s not a tough job and you can just relax in your home while doing it.
Just follow the steps properly.
- Log into your Shopify account and download product data after exporting it. You can get help from this article.
- Go to your WordPress Dashboard> Products, the section is right below WooCommerce.
- Click on the Import button.
- You will see a window asking you to upload the product CSV file.
- Now choose the CSV file that you downloaded from Shopify and continue.
- After getting the file, WooCommerce will match the file layout into its own. Just use the Column mapping to get your layout ready.
- Click on Run Importer and you are done!
Later, you can import the customer data & order details using simple steps.
Auto Product Migration With Plugin
Other than manual migration, you can migrate Shopify to WooCommerce automatically using plugins.
There are a bunch of useful plugins on the market that can help.
You can use S2W or Cart2Cart for this purpose.
These plugins offer a very simple migration procedure.
You just have to install it, insert your shop details and it will pick the data automatically.
Here’s a simple guideline:
- Insert Shopify store’s URL & API in the plugin’s interface to connect your shop.
- Link Your WooCommerce shop in the target field. You may use connection bridges for WooCommerce if necessary.
- Select the data for migration and match the product layout between the two platforms.
Done!
It’s very easy to migrate Shopify to WooCommerce.
Must Keep in Mind
Migration using plugin sometimes fail.
Always keep backups of your data as well as use a demo site for migration testing.
Also, there can be security issues with the plugins.
But you can be at ease as these two migration plugin is safe to use.
Although they charge for the migration process based on the amount of data, it’s nothing scary as the fees are super low.
Other Methods
When you don’t want to do it yourself, get an expert to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce.
Most probably hiring an expert will cost you 3-10 times more than doing it yourself.
But it’s worth it given that your store is big enough and has a huge amount of products.
Wrapping it Up!
Migrating Shopify to WooCommerce is not a difficult task.
It can be time-consuming for bigger websites.
But it hardly fails these days.
Just follow the steps and you can quickly transform your Shopify store into the bigger platform of WooCommerce.
The rest is up to you.
