Thinking of moving your WooCommerce store to Shopify? Here is what transfers, what breaks, how transaction fees work in India, and how to reduce the risk to your Google rankings.
Nobody moves from WooCommerce to Shopify because of one bad day. It's usually a slow build-up. A plugin update breaks the checkout. The hosting bill goes up. The store crawls during a sale. The developer who set everything up stops replying.
At some point, Shopify starts to look like the easy way out. Often it is. But the move has costs and trade-offs that most migration guides skip, especially if you sell in India.
So before you start exporting CSV files, here's what actually changes.
The Short Answer
Shopify is a good move if you're tired of maintaining your store and your setup is fairly standard. It's a poor move if your store depends on custom features, or if Shopify's transaction fees would eat into thin margins.
And if your only problem is a slow site or one broken plugin, fixing that is almost always cheaper than migrating. Our guide on redesign vs rebuild vs migration helps you tell the difference.
The Cost Nobody Mentions: Transaction Fees in India
This is the part that surprises most Indian store owners.
In many countries, Shopify has its own payment system, Shopify Payments. It isn't available in India. So you'll connect a third-party gateway like Razorpay, PayU or Cashfree, the same kind you probably use on WooCommerce today.
The catch is that when you use a third-party gateway, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on every order, on top of what the gateway charges. It's currently listed at about 2% on the Basic plan, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. WooCommerce has no equivalent fee.
Here's what that looks like. Say your online-paid orders come to ₹5 lakh in a month and you're on a plan with a 2% fee. That's roughly ₹10,000 a month to Shopify, before your gateway's own charges. Rates change, so check Shopify's India pricing before you do your own maths.
Two things balance this out:
- COD orders don't attract this fee. Shopify treats cash on delivery as a manual payment method, and manual payments aren't charged third-party transaction fees. Your courier's COD charges still apply.
- You stop paying for other things. Hosting, plugin renewals, security tools and a lot of maintenance work largely go away. On the other hand, features that were free plugins on WooCommerce, such as reviews or GST invoices, are often monthly apps on Shopify.
For many stores, the savings outweigh the new costs. For high-volume stores on entry plans, they sometimes don't. Run your own numbers.
What Moves Across, and What Doesn't
Shopify's own WooCommerce migration guide is clear about this:
| Your data | What happens |
|---|---|
| Products | Import via CSV or Shopify's migration app. Shopify supports up to 3 options per product, so anything with more needs extra work |
| Customers | Details can be imported, but passwords can't. See the note below |
| Order history | Needs a third-party migration app |
| Reviews | Not part of the standard product export. Export them separately and import through a Shopify reviews app |
| Theme | Can't be moved. Your design has to be rebuilt on a Shopify theme |
| Plugins | Don't transfer. Each needs a Shopify app, a setting, or custom work |
About customer logins: Shopify's newer customer accounts don't use passwords. Customers sign in with a one-time code sent to their email. So most of your customers won't need to "reset" anything. They just need to know the login has changed. Tell them before launch, or your support inbox will hear about it.
What Usually Breaks for Indian Stores
URLs. WooCommerce and Shopify use different URL patterns. Shopify uses fixed formats like /products/ and /collections/, so most of your product, category and page URLs will change. Each one that matters needs a redirect.
GST invoices. Shopify applies the GST rates you set up, but it doesn't generate a GST-compliant bill itself. You'll need an invoicing app. Get your accountant to check the tax setup before launch.
Courier integrations. Shiprocket, Delhivery and others have Shopify apps, but you'll need to set them up again. Test pincode checks, COD and order sync properly.
Custom plugins. This is where migrations get expensive. List every plugin and every bit of custom code, and find out what replaces each one. If several have no clean replacement, think hard before moving.
Keeping Your Google Rankings Safe
A migration doesn't automatically cost you search traffic, but it can if details are missed. Missing redirects are the most common and most preventable problem. Changes to page content, titles, internal links and indexing settings can also affect rankings.
What to do:
- Use Search Console to list the pages that actually get traffic.
- Redirect each changed URL to its closest new page. Shopify lets you import redirects in bulk.
- Carry over page titles, descriptions and product content, not just the products.
- Set up redirects before switching your domain, as Shopify recommends.
- Watch Search Console closely for a few weeks and fix errors as they show up.
No one can guarantee your rankings through a migration. But a careful one reduces the risk a lot.
How I'd Plan the Move
- Back up your WooCommerce store and keep it running until the new store is stable.
- Audit everything: products, plugins, integrations, URLs and current monthly costs.
- Compare real costs for both platforms, including transaction fees and apps.
- Build and import on Shopify, then rebuild the design.
- Test like a customer: online payment, COD, GST invoice, shipping, emails and mobile checkout.
- Do a final sync of any orders and customers that came in during the build.
- Launch in a quiet week, never just before a big sale.
- Monitor orders, customer emails and Search Console for the first month.
Once you're on Shopify, it's a good moment to fix what was already costing you sales. Our ecommerce conversion checklist is a good place to start.
Do You Need Help?
If your store is simple and you're comfortable with CSV files and app settings, you can do a lot of this yourself with Shopify's guide.
If you have custom plugins, several integrations or years of search traffic to protect, it's worth getting a second opinion before you start.
FAQs
Will I lose my Google rankings?
Not necessarily. Complete redirects, preserved content and careful testing reduce the risk, but no one can promise rankings stay exactly the same.
Will my customers need new passwords?
Passwords can't be migrated. With Shopify's newer customer accounts, customers sign in using a one-time email code instead, so most won't need a password at all.
Does Shopify charge a transaction fee in India?
Yes, on online payments through a third-party gateway, because Shopify Payments isn't available in India. COD and other manual payment methods aren't charged this fee.
My WooCommerce store needs a PHP upgrade. Should I just migrate?
Usually not just for that. A PHP upgrade is much cheaper than a migration. But if the upgrade exposes lots of outdated plugins and custom code, it can be the right moment to reconsider. See our guide on PHP 8.2 end of life.
I'm on Magento. Does this apply to me?
Much of it does, especially URLs, redirects and integrations. For Magento's own deadlines, see Magento 2.4.6 end of support.
Sources
- Shopify Help Center: Migrating from WooCommerce
- Shopify Help Center: Supported Countries for Shopify Payments
- Shopify Help Center: Manual Payment Methods
- Shopify Help Center: GST in India FAQ
- Shopify Help Center: Importing and Exporting Customers
- Shopify Help Center: URL Redirects
- Shopify India: Pricing