WooCommerce to Shopify migration: what an expert does, cost and timeline

A WooCommerce to Shopify migration expert moves your products, customers and orders, maps every old URL to a 301 redirect so you keep your rankings, replaces your plugins with Shopify apps, moves subscriptions without breaking billing, and reconnects payments. In my published pricing it costs ₹1,25,000 to ₹4,00,000 (about $1,500 to $4,800) and takes two to six weeks. Simple stores can do it themselves with a tool like Matrixify. Stores with subscriptions or real search traffic usually shouldn't.

I run WooCommerce and Magento migrations to Shopify from New Delhi, for brands in India and abroad. I've shipped 62+ brands in 5+ years on Shopify and I'm a Shopify Partner. This post covers what the work involves in any country, plus a section on the extra setup Indian stores need.

What does a WooCommerce to Shopify migration expert actually handle?

Most people think a migration means copying data. Data is the easy part. Here's the full scope, and what can go wrong in each area.

Two details change older advice. Shopify raised its variant limit from 100 to 2,048 per product on 15 October 2025, so big variable products no longer need splitting. And on Shopify's newer customer accounts, buyers sign in with a one-time 6-digit code sent to their email, so the old "customers must reset their password" problem mostly goes away.

How much does a WooCommerce to Shopify migration cost?

That band is on my migration expert page alongside the other source platforms. The price moves with catalog size, how many plugins need replacing, whether subscriptions are involved, and how much of the theme is rebuilt. The Shopify plan and paid apps come on top as monthly costs.

Can you migrate WooCommerce to Shopify yourself?

Yes, for simple stores. Three tools come up most often.

Matrixify's prices are from its pricing page in October 2026. Cart2Cart and LitExtension quote per migration, and LitExtension's estimator works from your product, order and customer counts. Run both for your own store before deciding.

These tools move data well. The decisions are still yours. Which old URLs matter? Which plugin does what, and what replaces it? How do 300 active subscribers keep getting billed? A tool can't answer those.

Here's how I'd split it:

• DIY is fine when you have a few hundred products, no subscriptions, a handful of plugins and modest search traffic.
• Hire an expert when you run subscriptions, earn a real share of revenue from organic search, have custom plugins, or can't afford a broken checkout during launch week.

What breaks most often in a WooCommerce migration?

1. URLs and SEO

WooCommerce product URLs default to /product/{slug}/ and categories to /product-category/{slug}/. Shopify forces /products/{slug} and /collections/{slug}. Every old URL needs a 301 redirect to its new home, or you drop the ranking equity you built. Google's site move guidance says 301 redirects pass ranking signals. Shopify lets you import the whole map as a CSV under Content, then Menus, then URL redirects.

A small dip during reindexing is normal. A lasting loss usually means the map missed URLs. I build it from a crawl of the live site plus Search Console's indexed pages and top pages by traffic. The full method is in Shopify migration without losing SEO.

2. Plugins and subscriptions

Every WooCommerce plugin doing real work (subscriptions, reviews, wishlists, bundles, COD rules) needs a Shopify app or custom code. The data behind it has to move too. List them all in week one. This is the part that gets underestimated most often.

Subscriptions need the most care. Active subscribers move to a Shopify subscription app. Their saved payment methods either carry over through the app's migration process or subscribers re-enter card details. What's possible depends on where the cards are stored today, so I check before quoting. On Mum & You, a UK brand I moved from Magento to Shopify Plus between April and June 2025, rebuilding subscriptions was a core part of the job. That migration finished with zero data loss and sales grew afterwards. Shopify Subscriptions vs Recharge covers the app choice.

3. Payments, shipping and taxes

Payment settings never migrate. In the US, UK, Canada, Australia and most of the EU, you can activate Shopify Payments. Elsewhere, and on any store that keeps an outside gateway, Shopify charges a third-party transaction fee: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. Shipping rates, carrier accounts and tax settings also need rebuilding and testing.

What changes for Indian stores?

Shopify Payments is not available in India. Indian stores connect a third-party gateway such as Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree, PhonePe PG or CCAvenue. Each prepaid order then carries the gateway fee, GST on that fee and Shopify's third-party fee.

Yearly billing brings Basic down to ₹1,499 a month and Grow to ₹5,599. The full breakdown is on the Shopify pricing hub for India.

The rest of the India setup:

• Cash on delivery. As a manual payment method, COD pays no Shopify transaction fee. Rebuild any COD limits, OTP verification or partial-payment flow your WooCommerce store ran.
• Couriers. Reconnect Shiprocket, Delhivery or your aggregator, with serviceability and rate logic.
• Gateway comparison. Razorpay vs PayU vs Cashfree covers fees and UPI.

Skip this and you launch a store that works but can't take the payment method many of your customers use.

What does the timeline look like week by week?

Here's a typical four-week plan for a mid-sized store:

A small, clean store can compress weeks 1 to 3 into two. A large catalog with subscriptions and custom plugins stretches to five or six weeks before launch. How long a Shopify migration takes goes deeper on what moves the clock.

How do you choose a WooCommerce migration expert?

Ask these before you sign:

1. How will you build the redirect map? A good answer mentions a crawl, Search Console data and a one-to-one map. "We'll redirect to the homepage" is a red flag.
2. What happens to my subscriptions? They should ask which plugin and payment provider you use before promising anything.
3. Which of my plugins don't have a Shopify equivalent? They should ask for your plugin list and answer plugin by plugin.
4. Is the price fixed? Ask for a written scope and a fixed price. Open-ended hourly billing on a migration usually grows.
5. Who does the work? Find out if the person you talk to is the one building, or if it's handed to a team you never meet.
6. What happens after launch? Ask how long they monitor Search Console and fix issues.
7. Can I see a migration you shipped? Ask for a real store and what happened to its traffic and sales afterwards.

Location matters less than these answers. Plenty of US, UK and EU brands hire offshore. Check that working hours overlap enough for launch day.

Should you redesign while you migrate?

Usually yes. You're rebuilding the theme on Shopify anyway, so fixing the old store's speed, structure and conversion problems costs little extra and saves a second project later. Keep the URL structure and content intact for SEO even as the design changes. When I rebuilt Mahina, a Gurgaon brand, from Figma into Shopify sections, average order value rose 28% and speed scores reached 95+. That kind of gain is easier during a rebuild than after one.

What I'd do

If your store has a few hundred products, no subscriptions and little search traffic, I'd try Matrixify's demo plan first and see how clean the import is. You may not need anyone.

If you run subscriptions or earn real revenue from organic search, I'd hire someone to own the redirect map and the subscription move, even if you do the data import yourself. Those two are where migrations lose money.

Either way, I'd start by exporting three lists: every URL Google has indexed, every active plugin and what it does, and your active subscriber count. With those three, any expert can give you an honest quote.

If you want me to scope yours, send me your store URL and plugin list and I'll flag what will break before we start. The migration expert page has the pricing for other source platforms.

Related reads

• The Shopify migration checklist
• Shopify migration without losing SEO
• Shopify vs WooCommerce for Indian D2C brands
• Magento to Shopify Plus migration

Sources

• Google Search Central: site moves with URL changes and 301 redirects
• Shopify Help Center: URL redirects and CSV import
• Shopify Help Center: importing and exporting products
• Shopify Help Center: new customer accounts
• Shopify developer changelog: variant limit is now 2,048 (15 Oct 2025)
• Shopify Help Center: Shopify Payments supported countries
• Shopify Help Center: third-party payment providers
• Shopify India pricing
• Matrixify pricing
• Matrixify: migrate to Shopify
• LitExtension pricing