The WooCommerce to Shopify migration checklist that actually covers everything
What to check before, during and after moving a WooCommerce store to Shopify: data, SEO, orders, customers and the traps nobody warns you about.
Most migration checklists are written by people who have never watched a real store move. They tell you to “export your products” and “set up redirects”, then wave you off. This one is different: it comes from the team that migrates WooCommerce stores for a living, and it includes the parts that go wrong.
Before you start
Audit what you actually have. Count your products, variants, customers, orders, coupons and pages. Your WooCommerce admin will give you rough numbers; your migration quote and your sanity both depend on them being right. Watch for plugin-created data: subscriptions, bookings and custom fields need a plan of their own.
Keep a backup of the source store. A migration reads your WooCommerce data; it should never modify it. Ours is read-only by design. But your own backup is non-negotiable regardless of which tool you use.
Decide what history matters. Order history is where migration tools differ most. Some import orders as draft orders, some skip the financials entirely, and either way your reporting quietly breaks. Storeflit imports orders as real Shopify orders with their original numbers, dates, totals, taxes and payment status, without emailing your customers or touching inventory. Whatever tool you use, check exactly how order history arrives before you commit.
During the migration
Stage first, always. The single biggest cause of migration regret is pushing data to a live store and discovering problems afterwards. Migrate into a staging environment, browse it like a customer, and fix what needs fixing before anything touches Shopify.
Check your variants. Variable products are where migrations break. Spot-check your most complex products: every option, every price, every SKU, every image.
Watch the metadata. Meta titles, descriptions, Yoast or RankMath data and image alt text should all carry over. If your tool treats SEO preservation as a paid add-on, ask yourself what else it skips.
After the push
301 redirects are the whole game. Every WooCommerce URL needs a redirect to its Shopify equivalent, or your search rankings evaporate. This should be automatic; verify a sample by hand anyway.
Customer passwords do not migrate. No platform allows password export; that is a security feature, not a gap. Your customers will reset their passwords on first login. Tell them before they discover it.
Keep WooCommerce alive until the numbers agree. Run both stores in parallel for a short period. Compare product counts, spot-check orders, and only retire the old store when Shopify has proven itself.
The short version
- Count everything, back up everything
- Stage the migration, review it properly
- Verify variants, metadata and redirects
- Communicate the password reset
- Retire WooCommerce only when the data agrees
A migration is not an export and an import. It is a controlled move of the most valuable data your business owns. Treat it that way, and it is boring in the best possible sense.
Ready to see your own store in staging? Calculate your migration cost or start a free test migration with up to five items per type.