Moving to Shopify from WooCommerce, Magento or Wix: a plan and timeline

Moving a store to Shopify is mostly a question of what you can take with you. Products usually travel well. Customers travel with limits. Orders, reviews, coupons and old web addresses each need their own plan. If you find this out in the last week, the launch can slip and search traffic can drop.

This article is for the owner of a WooCommerce, Magento or Wix store. It shows what each platform's own export gives you, what Shopify's Help Center says moves and what does not, and a phased timeline with a check at the end of each phase. For the general launch list, read our migration checklist. For search risk beyond redirects, read the article on redesigning a site without losing SEO. Pages were read on 3 November 2026. Platforms change their limits, so confirm each one before you rely on it. If you are still choosing a platform, start with Shopify or WooCommerce.

What each platform lets you export

WooCommerce. WooCommerce's own documentation says you export products from the Products screen with the Export button. You can choose columns, filter by product type and category, and add custom metadata. A Parent column links each variation to its parent product. Categories and tags are comma separated lists. Shopify's WooCommerce guide adds two warnings. The built-in customer report lacks street addresses, so it names a paid plugin for full customer data. Order history needs a third-party app that connects to WooCommerce directly.

Wix. Wix's help pages say products export to CSV from the Product tab, with up to 5,000 rows per file, and that exporting digital products is not currently supported. Orders export from the Orders tab as CSV, either one row per item or one row per order, with purchase times in UTC. Shopify's Wix guide adds that reviews cannot be exported or migrated, that contacts export up to 50,000 at a time, and that product images are fetched from their web addresses during import. So you must import products before you close the Wix store.

Magento. Adobe's documentation for exporting data from the Commerce Admin lists these export types: Advanced Pricing, Products, Customer Finances, Customers Main File, Customer Addresses and Stock Sources. The default format is CSV. Exports run in the background through a message queue, so the scheduled-task (cron) job must be running. The page is titled Adobe Commerce, names no version and does not mention orders. Shopify's migration overview links to guides for ten platforms, including WooCommerce and Wix, but Magento is not one of them. Shopify's Store Migration app lists Square, WooCommerce, Etsy, Wix, Amazon, eBay, Clover and Lightspeed as sources, and also offers a CSV upload. Its listing warns that some platforms do not export all data in compatible formats. So plan a Magento move around CSV files, and ask early how order history will move. Also check that your Magento version has the export screen Adobe describes.

What moves, what needs a tool, and what does not move

• Moves by CSV: products and customers. Shopify's free Store Migration app imports product and customer data. Shopify's WooCommerce guide says the app adds imported products as drafts. For customers, Shopify's import page says the file must be UTF-8, 15 MB or smaller, and have an Email column. Total Spent and Total Orders are ignored.
• Needs an app or the API: historical orders. Shopify's WooCommerce guide says orders cannot be imported by CSV and points to a third-party migration app. Shopify's overview says gift cards, store credits, blogs and pages can also be moved, and lists the APIs for them.
• Rebuilt or moved by an app: reviews, coupons, blog posts and pages. Shopify's guides say reviews are not in the WooCommerce product export and cannot be exported from Wix, and they name review apps such as Judge.me. For WooCommerce, they say coupons cannot be imported by CSV and blog posts and pages are not in its exports.
• Does not move: customer passwords. Shopify says imported customers can sign in with their email and a one-time code under customer accounts. For legacy customer accounts, the guide says to invite imported customers to create new passwords. Plan that email.

Four limits shape the product file. First, a Shopify product has up to three options, such as size, colour and material. Shopify's WooCommerce guide also says the Store Migration app imports a WooCommerce product that uses four or more attributes for its variations without its variants, so find those products before you import, not after. Second, Shopify downloads product images from the web addresses in your file, so the old store must stay online until the import finishes. Third, weights must be in grams. Shopify's WooCommerce guide gives kilograms times 1,000, pounds times 453.6 and ounces times 28.35. Fourth, the guide's import steps say to deselect Publish new products to all sales channels. Check the data before you publish.

Marketing consent needs a decision, not a default. Shopify's customer import page says to set email, SMS and WhatsApp consent separately for each contact, and to mark a contact as not subscribed if they never opted in. It warns that importing contacts who opted out or stopped receiving messages can lead to spam complaints and bounces. Ask your privacy adviser what consent record you hold before you export.

Redirects protect the traffic you already earn

Web addresses change when the platform changes. Shopify's Wix guide gives the default formats: Wix product pages use /product-page/ followed by a slug, while Shopify uses /products/ followed by a handle. Shopify's WooCommerce guide gives an example: a shipping policy page at /policies/shipping-policy might now be at /pages/shipping-policy. Each old address that earns visits or links needs a matching new one.

Shopify's page on URL redirects sets rules to design around:

• Redirects work only from broken URLs. If an old address still loads a page on the new store, the redirect will not apply.
• You can import redirects by CSV, using a sample file Shopify provides. A standard store can hold up to 100,000 redirects.
• Some paths cannot be redirected, among them addresses that start with /cart, /orders or /apps, and the exact fixed paths /products and /collections. Check the full list on Shopify's page.
• Shopify describes market subfolders in two ways on that page: a redirect applies to all of them by default, and redirects do not apply to them automatically. If a store sells in several markets, test each one, and create separate redirects for each subfolder when destinations should differ.
• Browsers and search engines cache 301 redirects, so a mistake can linger after you fix it.

Build the map before launch from three lists: the old store's sitemap, the pages with the most visits in your analytics, and the pages other sites link to. Shopify's guides say to set up redirects before you transfer the domain and to test your most-visited pages after launch. Its WooCommerce guide says Google indexing can take from a few days to a few weeks, so spread your search checks across that period.

A phased timeline with a gate for each phase

The Shopify pages read for this article give no durations, and time depends on catalog size, data quality and how much you rebuild. So this timeline uses phases and gates. Ask your agency, developer or store migration partner to put a date and a named owner on each one.

1. Phase 1, decide and inventory. List what moves, what is rebuilt and what is dropped: products, customers, orders, reviews, coupons, pages, posts, redirects and connected systems. Count products with more than three options. Gate: a signed list of what moves.
2. Phase 2, clean and export. Remove dead products and duplicate customers in the old store, then export. Reshape the files to Shopify's CSV template and convert weights to grams. Gate: a small test import that looks right.
3. Phase 3, build and import. Set up the theme. Import products first, then customers, then orders, because Shopify's guide says this order lets orders link to both. Gate: a spot check of prices, weights, stock, descriptions, images and variants.
4. Phase 4, settings and test orders. Set up shipping, taxes, payments and staff accounts. Place test orders for success, failure, refund, cancel, fulfil and archive, the cases Shopify's WooCommerce guide lists. Gate: every test passed and written down.
5. Phase 5, cutover. Load the redirects first. Shopify says you might need to disconnect the domain from the old platform, or you may meet SSL certificate errors. Then connect or transfer the domain and set it as primary. See domains, DNS and hosting explained for who should hold the registrar login. Gate: the top pages land on the right new pages.
6. Phase 6, after launch. Submit the sitemap Shopify generates at /sitemap.xml to Google Search Console. Shopify says search engines cannot reach it while the store is in private mode. Test the redirects again and keep the old exports archived. Gate: no important page lost, and customers can sign in.

Questions to ask before you agree a plan

• Which of my data moves by CSV, which by app and which by hand? Who pays for each app?
• How will order history move, and what will customers see in their account afterwards?
• Which products have more than three options, and how will you model them?
• How will customers sign in for the first time, and who sends that email?
• Who builds the redirect map, how many rows will it have, and how do we test it?
• What is the cutover sequence for domain and email, and who holds the registrar login?
• How long will the old store stay online and read only?
• What does done mean for each phase, and who signs it off?

ESTASOFT has offices in Dubai, Erbil and London and offers store migration as a service. Send a short brief on the contact page with your current platform, the rough number of products and the pages that bring you traffic. You can also read about what happens after launch.

This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Check the current rules or ask a qualified adviser before you decide.

Sources

• Migrating to Shopify (Shopify Help Center): the 11-step overview, data types that can move, the import order, links to platform guides, redirects and domain advice (checked 3 November 2026)
• Migrating from WooCommerce (Shopify Help Center): what moves, what needs apps, customer sign-in after import, weights, import settings, Store Migration app notes (drafts, variation attributes, options), test orders, indexing time (checked 3 November 2026)
• Migrating from Wix (Shopify Help Center): reviews, digital products, row and contact limits, images, URL differences (checked 3 November 2026)
• Import and export products with CSV (Shopify Help Center): three options per product, images downloaded on import (checked 3 November 2026)
• Import and export customers (Shopify Help Center): file rules, ignored fields, consent per channel, passwords (checked 3 November 2026)
• Creating and managing URL redirects (Shopify Help Center): redirect rules, limits and CSV import (checked 3 November 2026)
• Store Migration (Shopify App Store): supported source platforms, CSV upload option, product and customer data, warning about incompatible exports (checked 3 November 2026)
• Product CSV Importer and Exporter (WooCommerce documentation): where to export products and what the file contains (checked 3 November 2026)
• Wix Stores: exporting your product list (Wix Help Center): product export steps, digital products not supported, the 5,000-row limit (checked 3 November 2026)
• Wix Stores: exporting orders (Wix Help Center): order export format and display options (checked 3 November 2026)
• Export data (Adobe Commerce documentation): export types, CSV default, background processing, cron job; page titled Adobe Commerce, no version stated (checked 3 November 2026)