Methods to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce (and why you need to)

Contemplating a transfer from Shopify to WooCommerce? You’re in the best place. Whether or not you’re in search of extra flexibility, {custom} checkout choices, or just the flexibility to pay just for what you want — and by no means for what you don’t — WooCommerce has the choices to make it occur.

Altering ecommerce platforms generally is a huge step, however it’s definitely worth the effort. And, we’re right here to help you, must you need assistance whereas transferring your merchandise, clients, and orders to WooCommerce.

Excessive-volume WooCommerce shops qualify for distinctive advantages like devoted help and discounted extensions. Study extra about how our crew will help your enterprise develop.

Under, you’ll study why WooCommerce is a good alternative on your on-line retailer and tips on how to seamlessly migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce.

Shopify is a closed-source, proprietary ecommerce platform with solely paid plans obtainable. These plans embrace performance essential to run a web based retailer, together with web site administration, internet hosting, and extra.

Whereas this bundled strategy may be helpful for some retailer house owners, it in the end offers a lot much less flexibility and management than open-source platforms like WooCommerce.

WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce plugin constructed particularly for WordPress. The primary ecommerce platform (powering 3.6 million on-line shops), it consists of all the pieces wanted to run a web based retailer, like the flexibility to checklist merchandise, accumulate funds, and ship gadgets to clients. There are additionally practically limitless extensions obtainable for any extra performance you’ll be able to think about.

By combining WordPress and WooCommerce, website house owners achieve entry to unparalleled ecommerce instruments and value, alongside flexibility and customization.

There are lots of causes that WooCommerce is a better option for companies, regardless of their measurement or trade. 

In case you’ve grown bored with Shopify taking a minimize of your success, you’re actually not alone. And when shops do resolve to discover a new residence, the bulk select WooCommerce. Let’s check out why so many profitable companies choose WooCommerce to Shopify: 

1. Full possession and management over your enterprise

WooCommerce provides you full management over your web site. It’s an open supply ecommerce platform, which suggests that you’ve full entry to the supply code and might modify it to your coronary heart’s content material. You possibly can create precisely the shop you need, with out limitations. 

With Shopify, you’re basically leasing area on one other supplier’s platform and are topic to their management, choices, and degree of success.

With WooCommerce, you have got full management over:

Search engine marketing

Whereas your search engine rankings are largely based mostly on the work that you just put into your website and content material, WooCommerce means that you can edit each single side of your search engine optimization, regardless of how technical. This is only one nice instance of the pliability that open supply code offers. 

WordPress was initially designed as a running a blog platform, so content material is at all times a precedence. Not solely are you able to persistently publish high quality content material, you should use the highly effective block editor to boost your weblog posts with highly-engaging parts like pictures, movies, and media galleries — all by merely dragging and dropping them into place.

The block editor may also be used to construct fully {custom} templates on your weblog posts, guaranteeing your model is current on each web page of your web site. 

All this to say: With WooCommerce, you get extra than simply an ecommerce platform. You get a content material powerhouse that helps with search engine marketing, model consciousness, and conversion.

Cost gateway integrations

Each Shopify and WooCommerce provide integrations with main fee options, however WooCommerce shops can hook up with area of interest and native fee gateways that is perhaps vital for a global retailer or restricted items, like hashish merchandise. View fee gateway suppliers who’ve partnered with WooCommerce. 

Or, select WooPayments, a seamless resolution that simplifies the complete course of for you. Handle funds, disputes, deposits, and recurring income from the identical place you deal with the remainder of your website. Scale back cart abandonment by accepting funds immediately in your website, together with Apple Pay for one-click checkout. 

With WooPayments, you too can benefit from prompt deposits, so income leads to your checking account inside minutes (not like Shopify’s two-day minimal). 

And, not like WooCommerce, Shopify costs extra transaction charges for all third-party gateways. In case your month-to-month income exceeds $800k USD, Shopify collects one other 0.25%.

After you’ve labored arduous to create unbelievable merchandise and market them to new clients, the very last thing you need is to slim your revenue margins. Even for small shops, extra transaction charges can quantity to 1000’s of {dollars} in misplaced income. 

Backups

With a Shopify retailer, you’ll be able to export buyer information and orders, however you must pay a price to again up your web site design and settings. WooCommerce, nonetheless, has a wide range of glorious, free backup choices. 

Jetpack Backup is a good alternative for companies that may’t afford downtime or missed gross sales. It protects your retailer 24/7, saving your entire gross sales, adjustments, and content material in actual time in order that, it doesn’t matter what occurs, you at all times have the newest copy obtainable. 

Plus, it shops your recordsdata individually out of your web site for additional safety and means that you can restore a backup in a single click on, even for those who’re on the go, from the Jetpack cellular app.

It’s necessary to take care of as a lot management as doable so that you could make one of the best choices for your enterprise and clients. For instance, when scaling your retailer, it’s possible you’ll must improve to a number that may deal with extra visitors, provide quicker website speeds, or present superior safety choices. With WooCommerce, you’ll be able to select any internet hosting supplier that matches your necessities and finances.

With a Shopify web site, nonetheless, you’re locked in to their particular internet hosting setup and web site builder. If you outgrow their small enterprise plans, it’s an costly soar to enterprise-level phrases.

2. Limitless flexibility and customization choices

One of many greatest advantages of WooCommerce is its flexibility. Each WordPress and WooCommerce are open-source software program, which signifies that anybody can copy, modify, or change the supply code nonetheless they’d like. In distinction, Shopify is closed supply; they maintain full possession over their core code and supply just about no entry.

An open-source content material administration system, like WordPress, additionally signifies that there are limitless customization choices. Why? As a result of, with entry to supply code, builders can create {custom} plugins or themes to serve any variety of particular capabilities. 

Take Kellox, for instance: Their company crew at Maksimer created a {custom} API integration between WooCommerce and their enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) software program. The mixing permits Kellox to ship {custom} pricing and product suggestions on over 800,000 SKUs for his or her wholesale enterprise.

With WooCommerce, flexibility comes customary: The WordPress plugin repository has greater than 54,000 choices that assist with all the pieces from design to performance and advertising and marketing. WooCommerce shops can entry an extra extension market with over 800 add-ons constructed particularly for ecommerce.

Don’t see a plugin or extension that meets your wants? You possibly can rent a developer or company to create {custom} performance due to the WordPress REST API. 

There are greater than 80,000 freelancer builders, creatives, and builders supporting retailers worldwide. Whether or not it is advisable deliver on a contractor or full-scale growth crew, there’s at all times somebody close by and in your finances who’s capable of assist.

And in case your merchandise are difficult or distinctive, you’ll be able to arrange your WooCommerce retailer nonetheless you’d like. You possibly can create one thing fully {custom} to accommodate completely any want. 

For instance, Common Yums is a subscription meals field enterprise that entails difficult and time-sensitive importing and delivery processes. They took benefit of the open supply nature of WooCommerce to {custom} code a labeling course of for his or her bins. Every variation is outlined with availability dates, whether or not it accommodates perishable gadgets, and many others. in order that Common Yums can higher establish expiring merchandise.

In addition they added a {custom} delivery date selector to their checkout course of that integrates with their warehouse, advertising and marketing, and monitoring instruments. And thanks, partly, to the limitless flexibility of WooCommerce, they’ve efficiently offered greater than ten million bins, with peak gross sales durations seeing as much as 30 orders per minute — with out their website crashing or buffering. 

Methods to boost your WooCommerce retailer:

After all, you too can promote all the pieces from services and products to downloads, subscriptions, memberships, and bookings.

Examples of companies utilizing WooCommerce:

• Dan-O’s Seasoning. A big seasoning enterprise that sells with Woo, on channels like Walmart and Amazon, and in additional than 40,000 retail areas.
• ScrubDaddy. A cleansing provides firm with a novel, smiley sponge (amongst different enjoyable family items).
• PHLearn. A membership program that offers subscribers entry to a library of design templates and tutorials.
• Sticker Ninja. An organization that sells absolutely {custom} stickers — materials, form, design, and amount.
• It Will get Higher Undertaking. A nonprofit that sells bodily merchandise and accepts on-line donations.

In relation to designing your ecommerce website, the mixing between WordPress and WooCommerce once more offers a giant profit. The WordPress block editor permits for fully-custom design on touchdown pages, product web page templates, checkout, weblog posts, classes, and extra.

The block editor gives a drag-and-drop interface, permitting your crew to make fast edits to advertising and marketing and product pages with out touching a line of code. 

There are additionally limitless web site themes that vary from customizable designs to drag-and-drop layouts for area of interest shops. Twenty-Twenty 4, for instance, is the proper clean slate for a bespoke growth expertise. Affiche is the proper alternative for a store that sells artwork or artistic supplies. And Matthew is a superb choice for B2B shops. 

It doesn’t matter what performance or design you want, it doesn’t matter what trade you’re in, and it doesn’t matter what your finances is, you’ll discover a top-notch WordPress theme. In any case, WordPress boasts 1000’s of free and premium themes in comparison with only a couple hundred obtainable for a Shopify retailer.

With WooCommerce, your website design may be as easy or as complicated as you’d prefer it to be. 

Examples of WooCommerce shops with progressive designs:

• Entrepiedras Harina Selecta has a novel, grid-based design that feels very pure, like their flour.
• Cipher makes use of numerous motion and interactive scrolling to create a hyper-engaging expertise.
• Wild Souls has brilliant colours, enjoyable shapes, and interactive hover states that showcase their meals. 
• Mount Sapo has an interactive homepage design that catches the attention (and cursor) for a memorable expertise.

3. Full management over price of possession 

As open-source software program, WordPress and WooCommerce are free, which suggests your platform prices are personalized in accordance with the internet hosting and performance your enterprise wants. 

You possibly can select any supplier and blend and match instruments at totally different utilization tiers — corresponding to subscriptions, bookings, advertising and marketing automation, and analytics — because the enterprise grows. This flexibility prevents you from paying for performance that you just don’t use.

Learn our WooCommerce pricing submit for a transparent concept of how a lot it prices to run a WooCommerce retailer.

Checklist of charges for a Shopify retailer:

• Month-to-month plans. Relying on which Shopify web site plan you have got, you would pay between $29.99 and $299 a month for small companies, and upwards of $2,300 per thirty days for bigger companies. Some options are solely obtainable with sure plans: For instance, stay delivery charges are solely obtainable on the Superior Shopify plan ($299). With WooCommerce, you’ll be able to individually add items of performance you want, as the necessity arises, slightly than paying pointless extras.
• Add-ons. Many Shopify retailer add-ons that present extra performance require month-to-month charges, usually at a premium price. For instance, product waitlists price an extra $11.99 per thirty days, whereas the similar performance on WooCommerce is $4.09 per thirty days. Including back-in-stock notifications prices as little as $59 per yr on WooCommerce, however you’ll must shell out $200 to $800 for those who’re on Shopify. Utilized to each perform in your retailer, these extra bills add up rapidly.
• Transactions. In case you use an exterior fee gateway, Shopify takes between 0.5% and a couple of% per transaction, as well as to the charges your fee gateway costs. With WooCommerce, nonetheless, you’re not charged any punitive transaction charges for utilizing third-party gateways — which suggests you retain extra money in your pocket.

4. Entry to extra (and higher) delivery prices and instruments

Shopify does permit retailers to cost delivery charges and print labels from their accounts. It additionally consists of discounted pricing from USPS, UPS, and DHL. Nonetheless, with a view to present stay charges from carriers, you have to have an Superior plan, which comes on the hefty value of $299 per thirty days.

WooCommerce gives a free extension — WooCommerce Delivery — that additionally permits for straightforward label printing out of your dashboard and negotiated reductions with USPS and DHL. As well as, you’ll be able to show real-time delivery charges in your WooCommerce retailer for less than $9.00 per thirty days.

Plus, you have got many extra delivery choices with WooCommerce. Sync your retailer with any variety of worldwide delivery carriers, together with area of interest suppliers. It’s also possible to create very intricate, conditional delivery costs based mostly on all the pieces from cart complete and distance to particular person merchandise classes — or any mixture of things.

One of many greatest variations to notice is that WooCommerce is all about supporting their neighborhood of enterprise house owners, from entrepreneurs to enterprises. Although the core platform is totally free, they nonetheless provide extra sources and instruments at tiered prices, to make sure there’s software program for each finances. 

Whether or not you’re beginning or scaling your ecommerce enterprise, it’s necessary to allocate ecommerce overhead successfully. WooCommerce helps you make investments your cash within the areas that may develop your enterprise and make it essentially the most profitable.

5. Limitless variations

Product variations are the choices supplied to clients for every product. For instance, for those who promote T-shirts, you may provide crimson, blue, inexperienced, and yellow in sizes XS by way of 3XL. This mixture of colours and sizes would create 28 variations.

Relying in your merchandise, variations can rapidly add up. In any case, you need your clients to have the ability to select the best product for his or her wants!

Shopify limits variations on every product to 100. In case you promote males’s sneakers which can be obtainable in three widths (slim, common, and large), customary sizes six to fifteen (together with half sizes), and three colours, you’d have 153 variations. This may exceed Shopify’s limits. Nonetheless, with WooCommerce, you’ll be able to provide as many product variations as you want.

6. Entry to a close-knit neighborhood and top-notch help

Utilizing WooCommerce signifies that you’ve joined a neighborhood of people that wish to study and develop with you. Yearly, a whole lot of 1000’s of builders and enterprise house owners meet up just about and in over 400 cities around the globe. Discover out about WooCommerce meetups in your space.

For every WordPress replace, a whole lot of individuals voluntarily contribute their time to WordPress core, just because they’re obsessed with creating nice software program that powers the online. There are frequent Contributor Days, each on-line and in particular person, the place builders and customers work collectively to always enhance the platform. 

This neighborhood can also be behind the superb help boards for each WordPress and WooCommerce. There, you’ll be able to submit a query and get responses from a wide range of views. It doesn’t matter how fundamental or difficult your state of affairs is; somebody’s there that can assist you out!

WooCommerce gives a number of official choices to get assist along with your retailer: free help for Woo-built merchandise, premium help for complicated points, and enterprise consulting for higher-volume retailers. 

As compared, Shopify solely gives devoted help to Shopify Plus members incomes $10 million a yr or extra. Even paying $30,000 a yr may depart you stranded with no option to get assist.

Want superior assist? Woo Company Companions can help with all the pieces from small adjustments to full website builds and ongoing upkeep. They’re vetted by WooCommerce and are sorted by language, value, providers supplied, and extra.

And in case you have an enterprise-level retailer, Woo Enterprise is for you. With this program, high-volume companies can benefit from a devoted buyer help supervisor, migration help, precedence help, and low cost internet hosting. And that’s along with all the opposite nice choices WooCommerce gives that can assist you scale.

Irrespective of the dimensions of your retailer, WordPress is all about neighborhood over competitors — all of them need each other to succeed. So welcome to the WordPress household. You’ll find it irresistible right here!

If you have already got a Shopify retailer and wish to transfer to a WooCommerce retailer, don’t fear — the method is easy and you’ve got a number of choices. In any case, you wish to import Shopify buyer information and orders with out dropping something, and also you need the method to be as straightforward and seamless as doable.

First, it is advisable select a internet hosting plan, set up WordPress, and arrange WooCommerce. In case you don’t have a growth crew or company on workers, you’ll be able to learn to do that in our getting began information.

It’s necessary to notice that not one of the strategies beneath recreate your present Shopify retailer design and content material. Nonetheless, many free and premium themes can be found that can assist you construct something that you really want!

For company help on growth, design, integrations, and retailer administration, rent certainly one of our beneficial specialists.

There are a couple of methods which you can migrate Shopify to WooCommerce safely and securely: manually, with a developer, or with a plugin (don’t fear — there’s a free demo migration!). 

Let’s take a more in-depth have a look at each.

1. Woo Enterprise

As we talked about a second in the past, Woo Enterprise is a service for enterprise ecommerce shops. Along with highly effective options like a buyer success supervisor and precedence help, it consists of retailer migration help.

A devoted crew member will assist with each information migration and establishing your retailer with a block theme so you’ll be able to simply make customizations from there. That is the proper option to get began with WooCommerce seamlessly, with out having to fret about downtime or dropping information!

2. Rent an professional

For any high-volume enterprise with out an in-house growth crew, an agency-supported migration is among the finest selections. 

We’ve put collectively a database of Woo Accomplice companies, all of whom are hand-selected, high-quality builders that work with WooCommerce repeatedly. You possibly can filter by nation and examine a profile for every professional, the place you’ll discover samples of their work and details about their pricing and expertise.

This is a superb choice, as these builders will help with all the pieces — they’ll export information, migrate information, and recreate your Shopify retailer on WooCommerce. Or, they’ll create a totally new design distinctive to your enterprise and model.

3. Guide import/export

Though it might appear a little bit time-consuming, the method to import information and migrate your merchandise is free and comparatively easy. 

Methods to manually transfer from Shopify to WooCommerce: 

1. Export and obtain your product information out of your Shopify web site. You’ll want this export file available to import Shopify information into WooCommerce.
2. In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to WooCommerce → Merchandise. 
3. Choose Import on the prime. There, you’ll discover a built-in product CSV importer that may make the method simpler.
4. Click on Select File and choose which of the CSV recordsdata you wish to import. Click on Proceed.
5. You’ll see the Column Mapping display, the place WooCommerce mechanically makes an attempt to match the column identify of your Shopify CSV file to WooCommerce product fields. You might must map a few of these by yourself; achieve this utilizing the dropdown menus to the best of every row.
6. Choose Run the Importer and wait till the method is completed. 

In case you’d additionally prefer to carry out buyer and order information migration from Shopify, we advocate utilizing both the Migrate & Import Shopify to WooCommerce or Buyer/Order/Coupon CSV Import Suite extensions. Irrespective of which software you wish to use, it’s possible you’ll wish to carry out a demo migration to check issues earlier than going by way of the entire course of.

4. The Migrate & Import Shopify to WooCommerce extension

The Migrate & Import Shopify to WooCommerce extension is nice for companies that wish to deal with nearly all of the work themselves, however want a little bit extra assist than the guide course of offers. 

This software lets you migrate:

• Merchandise
• Prospects
• Orders
• Web page information
• Weblog submit information
• Coupons

You’ll have granular management over the import course of, with the flexibility to filter information based mostly on title, vendor, ID, and extra. Settings are all dealt with on the identical web page, too, so there’s no want to modify forwards and backwards between home windows. And the supplied documentation gives a wonderful walkthrough that may information retailers by way of the method. 

Bonus software: the Shopify Migration for WooCommerce extension

Able to get the phrase “migrate Shopify to WooCommerce” out of your thoughts? Prepared to maneuver to a platform that may help your long-term progress and enhance the expertise for you and your clients?

Whether or not you migrate your website and import merchandise your self, rent an professional, or use an extension, you’ll be able to rapidly and effectively transfer your retailer from Shopify to WooCommerce. It’s a sensible choice that your new and present clients (and your pockets!) will recognize. 

And for those who’ve already completed the WooCommerce migration course of, welcome! We’re excited that can assist you develop your new WooCommerce retailer and supply a seamless expertise on your clients.

View the complete WooCommerce characteristic checklist or discover our documentation.