Moving from Shopify to WordPress: Complete Guide 

Once you reach your Shopify store limits in customization and not being flexible enough your next step is to find another solution.

Usually there’re to possible ways -update your Shopify monthly plan and pay pretty much more or consider about migration form Shopify to more suitable CMS.

One of the best and most common options, is to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce +WordPress as a basis. Scroll and read our guide on how to move from Shopify with less possible cons and data loses.

Step by Step Guide Migrating from Shopify to WordPress + WooCommerce

• Make a backup of the Shopify and DB.
• Analyze website architecture and make a list of all plugins and features.
• Find out theme with the closes features and plugins included or order custom WordPress development
• Setup WordPress / Woocommerce staging environment or web development company will do this for you.
• Implement your theme or scope of plugins, API connections and features to setup your website.
• Consider about migration processes: plugin or manually, or hybrid.  A Paid WordPress plugin is your best bet to get complete data migrated to WordPress.
• Migrate your data base.
• Complete import process and review imported data.
• Set up miticulous step by step QA testing of all the features and check how the old data (especially ordering history) migrated.
• Setup a payment gateway in your Woocommerce, connect to your bank account and check the processing. There’re a lot of plugins from payment systems, banks and POS online software. You can analize fees, payment methods and chose the best options for your customers due to locations and payment systems common for them.
• Move the product catalog and attributes. Be very attentive with products feedbacks, specific measures and price history if you would like to save it. Often, this data can be lost using the plugin based migration.
• Move the blog if you had it.
• Setup any other pages such as About Us, Contact Us, Privacy Policy etc.
• Test complete flow including signup, login, add to cart, checkout and payment completion.
• Check the SEO fields, remember about right setups of URLs, 301 redirect and 404 page.
• Deploy the staging to live environment once fully tested and ready to go.

In some situations, even the paid plugins are not able to completely migrate your data from your existing Shopify store. In such a case, hire a web company that can get the data imported correctly for Shopify XML export file. As well as ou can transit data with custom migrating API. Custom solution is limitless and allows you to import data as per your choice. Even if there is some functionality that was not possible on Shopify system due to the platform core capability limitations, you can get that working on Woocommerce side.

Checklist Once Your Moved Shopify to WordPress

1. Verify how the data migrated (check missing data, incorrect data or incorrect structure).
2. If you’ve already set up WordPress and WooCommerce for your tasks, QA test all the features and how they work.
3. Check SEO fields (meta-s), and URLs and ensure you prepared 301 redirects if needed and set up 404 page.

Once you ensure the migration was done properly, you can go on with further plugins, set ups, API integrations and so on.

Core Plugins to Migrate Shopify to WordPress

There’re a couple of plugins created especially to transfer data from Shopify to WordPress and wooCommerce, as well as general migration plugins that can migrate from one CMS to another ans Shopify-WordPress among those.

Plugin S2W

One of the most famous plugin, that has more than 4000+ uploads and high rated by users. As much your WordPress is customized as less probability that plugins can cover migration processes and streamline all the data in a right way. However,  if you will migrate data before WordPress customization you can round the corners and win time and costs.

Key features of S2W migration plugin:

• Products per Ajax Request. The S2W adjusts the number of products imported per request and prevent server overload.
• Import Products Sequence. Feature that give you the range of flexibility on how to import products: by title, date when they were created, or date of last update.
• Import Unlimited Products. Doesn’t matter 10 , 1oo or 10 000 products -you can migrate them all, smoothy and safe.
• Product Variations / Parameters/ Attributes /Colours Migration. You can easily import all product variations from Shopify to WordPress with their current stock, price, and other attributes.
• Product Status. You can migrate your product catalog and keep the current status: “Publish,” “Pending,” or “Draft.”
• Product Category Mapping. Preserve and migrate the catalog structure as is, product categories or/and assign some categories to be migrated to a specific categories on the new website.
• Image Migration. You can migrate unlimited quantity of photos per product and keep the files’ structure.
• Migration Logs. You will receive detailed logs of the migration process for troubleshooting and just to keep the history of the process.

Cart2Cart Plugin

This plugin has the biggest uploaded statistics and quantity of reviews. 

Comparing to S2W it considered to be a bit more complicated in terms of setups, but much more precise and accurate in data migration and keeping the structure.

Cart2Cart Key Features: 

• Comprehensive Data Transfer. You can migrate products, customers, purchases, categories, reviews, and more.
• Customizable Mapping, You can map products’ fields from Shopify catalog to the corresponding fields in WordPress.
• Bulk Product Import. You can imports large quantities of products efficiently and in one time.
• Product Variation Migration. You can migrate all product variations with attributes, prices, and stock status.
• Image Migration. Helps you to migrates product images, including gallery and variation images.

Users mention that they like in Cart2Cart plagin data accuracy, minimum disruptions during and after migration, and customized options that assist the websites with unique structures to keep all the data.

However plugins can cover and automate migration processes some big stores it’s better to migrate manually or develop specific plugin or API to transfer all the data in a best possible way.

How to Estimate Migration Costs and Save Budget

1. Analyze your Shopify catalog, attributes structure, and amount of data you need to transfer.
2. Choose and set up your next CMS, and create all the product categories and product attributes structure as is now in Shopify. 
3. Gather estimation of data migration processes and calculate the costs of any additional plugins, tools or developers hours to assist you.
4. Be ready and estimate additional hidden costs: QA testing, fixing miss data, restructure data that wasn’t transferred in a best way.

Cost-Saving Tips while Migrating Your Web Site

1. Keep the data (products, purchases, articles) structure as is, and re-structure after migrating. 
2. Use highly rated tools and plugins for Shopify-to-WordPress migration, don’t be too addicted to free migrating tools. They can create a lot of issues and arise costs greatly.
3. When you considering between DIY migration and hiring professional migration services be sure you calculate all the cons and possible cons as well as the costs of your time and in-house recourses.
4. Plan and schedule the processes, track the progress and issues after each migration step to ensure all goes well and move to the next step.

If you would like to know how much does it cost to migrate your Shopify store to WordPress -ping IDL WEB INC consultant and have your estimation by the end of the same day.

Key Takeaways

• How to migrate from Shopify to WordPress is completely your decision. The three main methods are: migration plugin, manual data transferring and custom plugin or API to move all to a new platform. The hybrid of any of these two or all 3 can be also gainful, especially for big website with wide range of data and complex structure.  
• Cost of migrating processes can very greatly. Attentive planning, scope of features and range of data needed to be transferred will help you to estimate and navigate the process in a hassleless manner.
• Outsource the migrating processes or keep in-house it’s also up to your, capacity and skills of your internal specialists in both CMSs. The best option is to estimate scope of work, timeframes and your recourses to find the right answer.