What data transfers when migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify?

What moves, at a glance

Data	What comes across	What to know
Products and variants	Titles, descriptions, prices, SKUs, inventory and variants for simple and variable products	Shopify allows three options per product
Categories	Each category becomes a collection, with its products inside	Nested categories become flat collections
Images	Product images and images inside product descriptions	Only while your old site keeps serving the downloads
Customers	Customer records that Shopify accepts, guest checkouts included	Addresses and usable phone numbers are included. Passwords do not transfer, and marketing consent support is limited
Orders	Order history with products, prices, dates and the linked customer	Stored for reference and reporting, not as active orders
Coupons	Imported as Shopify discounts	Overall usage limits and email restrictions do not carry over
Product reviews	Exported as a file for a Shopify review app	Not visible on your storefront until you import that file
WordPress pages	Become Shopify pages	Text arrives, and images import while your old site keeps serving the downloads. Layout and styling do not
Blog posts	Become Shopify blog articles	The first category becomes the blog. Tags and comments stay behind
Redirects	Old product and category URLs point to the new ones	Only with Create URL redirects enabled
SEO fields	Supported product meta titles and descriptions from Yoast and All in One SEO	Not carried over for pages and posts

Most store data is migrated automatically. Shopify applies its own validation rules, so individual records can need review.

Products, variants and categories

WooCommerce Importer imports simple and variable products. Variations become Shopify variants. Shopify supports three options per product, so a product that uses more than three attributes for its variations needs a decision before you migrate.

Attributes that are not variant options are a separate matter. With “Import product metadata as metafields” enabled, supported source metadata goes into Shopify metafields. A metafield does not show on a product page by itself, so your theme may need an adjustment to display it.

Categories become collections. Shopify has no parent and child collections, so Clothing → Men → Shirts arrives as flat collections. Check how that hierarchy appears in your navigation menu. See how categories are migrated.

Orders arrive as history

Imported orders sit in Shopify for reference and reporting. They are not active orders.

You choose which WooCommerce order statuses to import and map each one to a Shopify financial and fulfillment status. You can import all time, the last 30, 60 or 90 days, from the start of a year or from your last order migration. Line items are matched to Shopify variants where a match is found. Refund records can be imported when the imported order has a transaction to attach them to. Customer order notes come across, and the optional order-notes setting stores additional notes in an order metafield.

Your customers do not receive emails when their past orders are imported. Shopify may still notify your staff, and you can turn those notifications off while the import runs.

Customers

WooCommerce Importer can show a lower customer count than WooCommerce does, because WooCommerce includes guest checkouts in its total. Guest checkouts are still imported as customers.

Shopify rejects a customer whose email address or phone number is already in use. Those appear in the migration log as Email has already been taken and Phone has already been taken. On a re-import that is expected. Other rejections, such as Email is invalid, are not shown in the log, so read what the log does and does not show and spot-check a few accounts.

Billing and distinct shipping addresses are included, along with usable phone numbers, subject to Shopify validation. Email marketing subscriptions are supported from Mailchimp for WooCommerce metadata. Do not assume consent from other plugins carries over.

Passwords do not transfer. With Shopify customer accounts, customers sign in with a code sent to their email. If you use legacy customer accounts, invite them to set a new password.

Coupons

Coupons import directly as Shopify discounts. Percentage, fixed-cart and fixed-product amounts are mapped, and “individual use” prevents the discount from combining with other discounts in Shopify. A per-customer usage limit of one becomes once per customer. Other per-customer limits, overall usage limits and email restrictions do not carry over.

Product and category restrictions are mapped to the products and collections imported into Shopify. Check those restrictions and expiry dates against WooCommerce, since not every source rule is preserved.

Open your active coupons in Shopify after the import and compare them with WooCommerce before you announce a sale.

Reviews need a review app first

Shopify has no reviews of its own. It stores them through third-party apps, so WooCommerce Importer does not write reviews into your store. It exports them as a file that you import into a Shopify review app.

Pick the review app before you migrate. WooCommerce Importer exports CSV files for Judge.me and Loox. Until you import the file, your imported reviews do not appear on your product pages.

Pages and blog posts

A WordPress page becomes a Shopify page with its slug, title and publish date. A post becomes a blog article, and its first category becomes the Shopify blog it lives in. Links inside the body are rewritten to the Shopify URLs the same migration created.

The words arrive, and the images import while your old site keeps serving the downloads. The look does not. Layouts built in Elementor, Divi, WPBakery or the block editor usually come out flat, and shortcodes are left in the text as plain tokens. Comments and tags are not migrated, only the first category of a post is used and the author on every article reads “Admin”. The details are in what happens to your WordPress pages and posts.

Redirects

With “Create URL redirects” enabled, WooCommerce Importer creates Shopify redirects from your old product and category URLs during the import. Every imported page and post gets a redirect from its old WordPress permalink. Read how migration redirects work and test your highest-traffic old links before switching domains.

What does not transfer

Your theme and your plugins stay in WordPress. So do your payment gateway, shipping and tax settings. Shopify has its own version of each and you set them up fresh.

Product types other than simple and variable are a mixed case. external and redq_rental products come in as simple products. Grouped products, WooCommerce Subscriptions, bookings and bundles are skipped, and the log shows Skipping product {id} with type {type} for each one. If you rely on any of these, plan how to rebuild them in Shopify before you migrate.

What to check afterwards

• Open ten products next to the live WooCommerce pages, including one with many variations and one with images in the description.
• Compare the product, customer and order counts with WooCommerce, then read the migration log for warnings.
• If photos are missing, follow the image recovery steps.
• Open one long page built in a page builder and search your pages and posts for [.
• Check your active coupons.
• Open a handful of old URLs and confirm where each one lands.

Keep WooCommerce running until you have done all of that.

How it is priced

One flat one-time price covers products, customers and orders together. Your price is the lowest tier that covers all three counts. It is free up to 100 products, 50 customers and 50 orders, and the free tier also takes up to 50 coupons, 100 pages and 100 posts. Re-imports are free. See the full pricing table.

If you would rather not run it yourself, our $299 expert migration covers the import. We set up the API keys, run it, verify the result and add theme metafields where needed so WooCommerce attributes show on the product page. It is not a data cleanup service.

If you want to compare before committing

Doing it by hand works for products. Our WooCommerce CSV guide shows what a product CSV carries, which does not include orders, customers, coupons or reviews. If you prefer preparing and transforming data in spreadsheets, read our comparison with a spreadsheet-based migration tool.

Ready to move to Shopify?

You need a Shopify store before importing. Start your Shopify store here. It costs you the same as signing up directly, and Shopify pays us a referral fee.

Already have a store? Install WooCommerce Importer, connect WooCommerce and try the free tier with up to 100 products, 50 customers and 50 orders.

Install WooCommerce Importer

Migrating from PrestaShop instead? PrestaShop Importer has the same free tier counts. See PrestaShop to Shopify.