Is it time to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce? Your guide to costs, control, and flexibility

If you’re considering leaving Shopify, you’re probably not acting on a whim. Something about the platform is making your business harder to operate than it should be. Maybe your team keeps hitting the same limitations, or you’re paying more and more just to get things to run the way they should.

But if your store is working and you’re receiving orders, you need some solid evidence that a move to WooCommerce is really worth it.

A migration makes the most sense when your frustrations stop being minor annoyances. If platform limits are starting to affect your margins, operations, customer experience, or ability to grow, it’s time to look at what more control could give you.

Work through the table below to get a clearer picture of what your current setup costs, where your team spends their time, and any limitations you’re experiencing.

Let’s say that your business generates $12 million in annual revenue and sells configurable product kits with a pre-order option.

You’re on Shopify Plus at $2,300 per month. You also use Bundler – Product Bundles ($9.99/month), BYOB Build Your Own Bundles ($199/month), and Notify! Back in Stock/Preorders ($499 month).

There are Shopify transaction fees when customers use PayPal (0.2% per order), along with additional platform fees tied to your sales volume ($2,500/month). You also pay for custom development and ongoing maintenance for important functionality.

This gives you a much more useful number than your Shopify subscription price alone, based on the way your business actually operates. Once you’ve filled out the table, run your numbers through Woo’s TCO Calculator for an estimate based on your situation.

In most cases, a single reason isn’t enough to migrate to an entirely new platform. Instead, the little frustrations, the workarounds, the lack of ownership, and the integrations that don’t quite work start to add up.

Here are some signs it’s time to consider a move.

You’re forcing your store to fit within platform limits

With Shopify, functionality like complex catalogs, B2B pricing models, custom checkout experiences, and multichannel selling can require combining third-party tools or piecing together a solution. This is particularly true of plans below Shopify Plus. Those workarounds mean more development work and more to maintain as your business grows.

While both WooCommerce and Shopify can support large, complex stores, Woo provides a completely different level of control and flexibility.

Because WooCommerce is open source, you can shape your store around the way your business actually operates. That might mean building a custom pricing model, creating a unique checkout flow, designing a complex catalog, or supporting multiple sales channels without working around platform limits.

Skincare brand grüum processes up to 80,000 orders a month across roughly 300 SKUs, with products sold individually, through subscriptions, and in bundles with custom pricing and stock rules.

When evaluating platforms, grüum found that their business operations would have to change in order to use Shopify. They chose WooCommerce instead, where their team could build around an existing model instead of simplifying it to fit the platform.

Integrations have become essential tools

As you grow, your store will likely become 1 part of a much larger operation. While a prebuilt app may have been enough to connect Shopify to your ERP, CRM, warehouse, or other systems, you now need those systems to work together more closely.

Perhaps your ERP needs to dictate pricing, several different channels need to sync inventory, or orders need to follow custom fulfillment rules.

You want ownership over your store

Ecommerce handles customer data, payments, operations, content, and more. Ownership of that information is especially valuable when a business needs to decide where data lives, how pricing and checkout rules work, or where your store is hosted.

With WooCommerce, your business makes those decisions rather than the platform you’re using. Your team can build plugins, create custom workflows, and integrate new tools without waiting for Shopify to add new features.

For Landyachtz, control meant bringing Canadian and US stores together on 1 WooCommerce site, while still managing complex requirements for currencies, payments, regional pricing, and promotions. The move cut the ecommerce workload in half and reduced annual platform costs from about $45,000 to under $10,000.

You need more control over payments

Payment gateways have a huge impact on your margins, processes, and the overall customer experience. Ask yourself:

Can you choose the gateways you want for each region? Negotiate rates directly with providers? Use the same payment provider across selling channels? Support the payment methods your customers prefer? Are you paying extra because of the provider you use?

WooCommerce separates the commerce side from the payment provider, which gives you the freedom to make choices based on what works for your business rather than what your platform allows. Shopify charges additional transaction fees of up to 2% for third-party payment gateways, but with WooCommerce, there are no additional fees.

You don’t need to migrate the second you start noticing limitations. If you’re heading into a major selling season, are still working through your migration plan, or don’t have the right team in place, it may make sense to wait.

One expensive app or clunky workflow probably isn’t enough to justify migration on its own. So if the issues you’re experiencing are still manageable, you might want to pause.

Migration makes sense when you have a clear plan in place and your current setup is negatively affecting your margins, operations, customer experience, or ability to adapt quickly.

Our TCO Calculator can give you a quick estimate of what WooCommerce will cost monthly compared to Shopify. The cost of migration will vary depending on the complexity of your site.

Talk to our team to get a personalized estimate, created according to your specific needs. You can use this template to list what you might need before the call to help us give you an accurate quote.

And when considering the switch, don’t forget to account for the cost savings that are a bit hard to assign a number to. Migrating can lead to less manual work, faster product launches, more flexible integrations, more control over payments, and the ability to add functionality without hitting Shopify’s platform limits.

There are a few methods to perform the migration, such as automated tools, specialized WordPress plugins/extensions, or a manual CSV export-and-import process. We recommend starting with our thorough Shopify to WooCommerce migration guide and our get-started guide before you decide.

• The manual CSV method is best for smaller (or less complex) stores. Export your products as a CSV file from your Shopify admin panel (Products > Export), and import it into WordPress using the built-in importer under WooCommerce > Products > Import. Although it may seem a little time-consuming, the process of importing data and migrating your products is free and relatively straightforward.
• You can use an integration or extension — we recommend the official Migrate & Import Shopify to WooCommerce extension, which costs $79/year — to connect your Shopify store directly via API credentials. If you’d also like to perform customer and order data migration from Shopify, we recommend using either the Migrate & Import Shopify to WooCommerce extension or the Customer/Order/Coupon CSV Import Suite extensions.
• An automated migration service or agency can perform the migration for you. Many skilled professionals specialize in migrations, but note that this may be the priciest option.

If your team is ready to move, start working through the WooCommerce migration documentation. It walks you through the entire process, from planning to launch. You can also try out our TCO Calculator to see how WooCommerce pricing compares to Shopify for your specific situation or reach out to the Woo team for a custom estimate.

If you’re still making the case for migration, go back through the framework above with your actual numbers and requirements. You should be able to answer 4 questions:

• What is Shopify costing us currently?
• Where is it limiting how we want to operate, integrate, or customize?
• What would moving cost?
• What would change if we had more control over payments, data, integrations, and the rest of our commerce setup?

The answers to those questions help you decide whether the cost and effort of migration are justified by the control, savings, and operating improvements WooCommerce provides.

View the full WooCommerce feature list or explore our documentation.

About

Shubert Koong

Shubert Koong is a product marketing leader at Automattic, where he manages marketing strategies for WooCommerce.