Moving From Shopify or Wix to WordPress: A Practical Guide

Shopify and Wix are great until they aren't - the app fees stack up, the theme customization hits a wall, or you just want to own your stack instead of renting it. Moving to WordPress and WooCommerce fixes that, but it's a different kind of migration than a normal site transfer. There's no database to copy and no SSH access to the old server. Everything has to come out through exports, APIs, and a bit of manual cleanup. Here's how to do it without losing orders, rankings, or your sanity.

Why This Migration Is Different

A typical WordPress-to-WordPress move is a file and database copy. Shopify and Wix don't give you that option - they're closed platforms, so you're working with whatever export tools they expose plus a fresh WooCommerce build on the other end. That means:

• Products, customers, and orders move as CSV files (or via API), not a database dump.
• URL structures change completely - /products/blue-mug on Shopify becomes /product/blue-mug on WooCommerce, and Wix URLs are worse, often with query strings.
• Apps you paid for (reviews, upsells, subscriptions) don't come with you - you'll need WooCommerce plugin equivalents.
• Email, if it was tied to your Shopify/Wix domain, needs its own migration plan alongside the store.

Before You Start: What to Have Ready

• A WooCommerce site live on Getwebup - cPanel or VPS, WordPress and WooCommerce installed, theme picked, before you import a single product.
• Full exports from the old platform - products, customers, orders, and a copy of your current site's pages (About, Policies, blog posts) since these don't transfer automatically.
• A list of every app/feature you rely on - so you can map each one to a WooCommerce plugin before go-live, not after a customer complains it's missing.
• Payment gateway credentials - Razorpay, Stripe, or PayPal API keys, since you'll be reconnecting these fresh in WooCommerce.
• Low DNS TTL set 24-48 hours in advance - drop your A record TTL to 300 seconds so the eventual domain cutover is fast.

Step 1: Export Your Data From Shopify or Wix

This step looks different depending on where you're coming from:

Download every CSV and keep a dated backup off both the old platform and your computer - if the export tool times out halfway through on a large catalog, you don't want to start from zero.

Step 2: Set Up WooCommerce First, Import Second

Get the destination ready before you bring any data over:

1. Install WordPress and WooCommerce on Getwebup (Softaculous in cPanel makes this a few clicks).
2. Set your currency, tax settings, and shipping zones to match what you actually charge - these don't come from the CSV.
3. Install a theme and get the homepage, product page, and cart looking right with one or two test products before the bulk import.

Step 3: Import Products the Right Way

WooCommerce's built-in importer (Products > Import) reads standard CSVs, but Shopify and Wix exports rarely match its column names exactly. Map the fields manually during import rather than trusting auto-detect:

Shopify column      -> WooCommerce field
Handle               -> SKU
Title                -> Name
Body (HTML)          -> Description
Variant Price        -> Regular price
Image Src            -> Images

Run a test import of 5-10 products first. Check that images actually pulled in (WooCommerce fetches them from the URLs in the CSV - if Shopify has already taken the store down, those URLs are dead and images will fail silently). Only run the full import once the test batch looks clean.

Step 4: Rebuild Your URLs and Redirect the Old Ones

This is the step people skip and regret. Every product, category, and blog URL is about to change, and if you don't redirect the old paths to the new ones, you lose the search rankings and backlinks you've built up.

• Export a full list of your old URLs before shutting down Shopify/Wix - Screaming Frog or your XML sitemap works for this.
• Build a redirect map: old path > new path for every product, collection, and page.
• Add these as 301 redirects in .htaccess on Getwebup, or use a redirection plugin (Redirection, Yoast's redirect manager) if the list is long.

# .htaccess example - Shopify product to WooCommerce product
Redirect 301 /products/blue-mug /product/blue-mug
Redirect 301 /collections/mugs /product-category/mugs

Submit your new XML sitemap in Google Search Console right after cutover, and keep an eye on the Coverage report for 404s in the following weeks - that's your signal that a redirect is missing.

Step 5: Reconnect Payments and Cut Over DNS

Set up your payment gateway plugin (WooCommerce Payments, Razorpay, or Stripe) on the new store and run a real test transaction before going live - refund it after. Once the store is verified end-to-end on a temporary URL or hosts-file entry, point your domain's DNS to Getwebup:

Type: A
Name: @
Value: 
TTL: 300

Because you lowered the TTL in advance, most visitors will be hitting the new WooCommerce store within 15-30 minutes of the change.

Step 6: Post-Migration QA Checklist

• Place a real order end-to-end - product page, cart, checkout, payment, confirmation email.
• Check that customer accounts (if imported) can log in and see their order history.
• Verify tax and shipping calculations against a few real addresses.
• Confirm transactional emails (order confirmation, shipping updates) are actually sending - test with WP Mail SMTP configured against your Getwebup mailbox or a transactional service.
• Don't cancel your Shopify/Wix plan for at least a week - keep it as a reference in case a product detail or image didn't make the trip.

Prevention: Avoiding the Common Migration Regrets

Most post-migration headaches trace back to one of three things: skipping the redirect map, importing before WooCommerce's tax/shipping settings were configured, or canceling the old plan too soon to double-check something. Budget a full day for the data move and a week of monitoring afterward - rushing the cutover is where sales get lost, not the migration itself.