Move your WordPress or WooCommerce shop to Shopify without losing your data, your customers or your Google rankings. Products, blog, redirects and design handled for you, on a fixed quote from a Cork studio building online since 2006.
You do not touch the technical side. Here is how we run it from start to finish.
Every migration is quoted on your actual store, because two things decide the price.
Before you commit, we go through your products and every plugin and tell you what each one becomes on Shopify. Then you get a fixed written quote, so there are no surprises halfway through.
Kieran has been building websites for Irish businesses for over twenty years, on WordPress, WooCommerce and Shopify. That means we understand what your current site is really doing behind the scenes, not just how it looks, and how to rebuild it properly on Shopify.
We are honest about what transfers cleanly and what needs rebuilding, so you know the trade-offs before any work starts. We keep your SEO front of mind throughout, because a migration that costs you your rankings is not a migration worth doing. We are based in Cork and work with businesses all over Ireland.
The full process, step by step, is further down this page. You can also see our Shopify web design work.
Moving a store from WordPress to Shopify is mostly a data problem and a redirect problem. Get those two right and nobody notices the change except you. Get them wrong and you lose rankings you spent years building. Here is how the two platforms compare on the things that usually drive the decision.
| Factor | WordPress with WooCommerce | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting and security | You manage it, or pay someone to | Fully managed and included |
| Ease of use | Steeper learning curve | Designed for non-technical owners |
| Customisation | Almost unlimited through code and plugins | Flexible within Shopify’s framework |
| Built-in ecommerce | Added through plugins | Core to the platform |
| SEO control | Very granular with Yoast or RankMath | Good, but more limited URL control |
| Ongoing maintenance | Regular updates and monitoring needed | Handled by Shopify |
| Best suited to | Owners who want full control | Owners who want to focus on selling |
What you gain. Shopify handles server management, security patching and performance automatically, so the background work of hosting, plugin updates and vulnerability watching goes away. Payments, inventory, shipping and tax are native rather than bolted on, so there are fewer moving parts to troubleshoot. And it scales through sales spikes without you touching anything.
What you give up. Fine-grained URL control, the open-ended flexibility of plugins and custom code, and some of the advanced SEO settings Yoast and RankMath offer. For most trading stores the trade is worth it, but it is a trade.
Plenty of services advertise automated WordPress to Shopify migration, promising to move everything in a few hours. They can shift basic data, but they struggle with the things that make a WordPress site unique.
Usually handled well:
Where they fall short:
Automated migration gives you a foundation, not a finished store. Every migration needs a person to go through it afterwards, and that is most of what we do.
There are three realistic ways to move your data, and most migrations use a mix of them.
Shopify’s own CSV import. Shopify imports products and customers from a spreadsheet in its own format. It is free and under your control, but you have to reshape your WooCommerce export to match Shopify’s columns, which takes care with variants and images.
A migration app. The Shopify App Store has several apps that connect to WooCommerce and pull products, customers and orders across directly. They save a lot of spreadsheet work on bigger catalogues. Check what each one moves before you pay, because some leave out blog posts, reviews or custom fields.
A bulk import tool such as Matrixify. This is the tool for control: it imports and exports products, customers, blog posts and URL redirects in bulk from spreadsheets, so data can be fixed in Excel or Google Sheets and pushed back in.
Whichever is used, the result is a first draft that a person then checks line by line.
Your blog. Content is often where a business has built real search authority, so it deserves its own attention. Posts transfer, but formatting, embedded media and internal links usually need manual correction, because Shopify’s blogging tools are more basic than WordPress. Images frequently need re-uploading, and every internal link between posts has to be updated to its new Shopify address. We identify the posts that already earn traffic, make sure each one transfers fully, and set up a redirect from every old post URL to its new home.
Products. WordPress product data often includes custom fields, advanced attributes and plugin-specific information that does not map neatly onto Shopify’s product structure. We review every listing so descriptions, pricing and images display correctly, and rebuild the variants and category relationships that automated tools interpret poorly.
Customers. Names, emails and contact details import cleanly, and historical orders come across for your records. Passwords do not carry over on any platform, so your customers will need to reset them or create fresh accounts. We plan the customer communication around this so nobody is caught by surprise.
What you should expect to lose. Some information has no equivalent in Shopify. Commonly incomplete after any migration: custom post types and fields created by plugins, advanced WordPress-specific tracking data, membership levels and user roles, custom form submissions, blog comments, and complex discount rules. Knowing this list in advance lets you decide what to rebuild, what to archive and what to let go, before anything moves.
Shopify uses fixed URL patterns, so almost every page address on a WooCommerce site changes in the move. This is the single biggest cause of lost rankings, and it is completely avoidable.
| Page type | Typical WooCommerce URL | Shopify URL |
|---|---|---|
| Product | /product/blue-mug/ | /products/blue-mug |
| Category | /product-category/mugs/ | /collections/mugs |
| Page | /about-us/ | /pages/about-us |
| Blog post | /blog/our-story/ | /blogs/news/our-story |
| Shop page | /shop/ | /collections/all |
We start from a full crawl of the current site and the Google Search Console pages report, so every URL that matters is on the list. Then we build a two-column map, old address to new, and keep the product and collection handles the same as your old slugs wherever we can. Shopify imports redirects in bulk from a CSV, so a few hundred take minutes once the map is right. After launch we watch Search Console for 404s and redirect anything that was missed. The redirects stay in place permanently.
Plugins like Yoast and RankMath offer fine-grained control that Shopify does not always match directly, so schema markup, meta settings and internal links are recreated on the Shopify side rather than assumed to carry over.
This is the part that decides how hard, and how expensive, a migration is. WordPress add-ons rarely have an exact match on Shopify. Each one needs a decision: replace it with a Shopify app, rebuild it, or drop it.
| What the plugin does | On Shopify |
|---|---|
| SEO (Yoast, Rank Math) | Titles and descriptions are built in. Schema and advanced settings come from the theme or an app. |
| Caching, security, backups | Not needed. Shopify handles hosting, speed and security. |
| Multi-currency | Built in through Shopify Markets. |
| Product options and add-ons | Simple options become variants. Complex add-ons, engraving or custom builders need an app. |
| Subscriptions and memberships | Needs an app, and customers usually have to sign up again. |
| Bookings, wishlists, reviews, quote requests | An app for each, and features rarely match one for one. |
| Contact and enquiry forms | Shopify’s contact page covers the basics. Anything more needs an app. |
So every quote starts with a plugin audit: every active plugin, what it actually does for the business, and what replaces it. Some plugins turn out to do nothing anyone needs, which makes the move cheaper. Others are doing something important behind the scenes, and that is far better found before launch than after. Your theme will not transfer either, so the design is rebuilt within Shopify’s theme structure.
Once the data is across, a few settings matter specifically for Irish stores, and they are part of every migration we do.
Payments. Shopify Payments works in Ireland and takes cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay in euro. If you used Stripe or PayPal on WooCommerce, those connect to Shopify too. See which Irish payment providers work with Shopify.
VAT. Prices are set to show VAT included and your Irish VAT registration goes into Shopify’s tax settings. If you sell to consumers in other EU countries above the threshold, you will likely need the One Stop Shop scheme through Revenue. Talk to your accountant, then see how Shopify handles VAT for Irish businesses.
Shipping. Shipping zones and rates are rebuilt, and An Post or your courier connected. Our guide to setting up An Post shipping on Shopify walks through it, and so does the list of Irish shipping providers that work with Shopify.
Your .ie domain. You keep your domain and point it at Shopify when you go live, so your address, email and branding stay the same. We check where your email is hosted before any DNS record changes, so nothing stops working.
For the full picture on payments, shipping, VAT and click and collect, see our guide to Shopify in Ireland.
Your WordPress site stays live throughout the process, so the business keeps trading and there is a safety net if anything appears.
During the overlap. While both platforms exist, inventory and orders are managed carefully to avoid overselling, and every order is fulfilled. Customers are told about the move and any change to account access or checkout, with clear messaging around password resets.
Go-live. We pick a quiet date away from sales events, prepare a rollback plan, test payments, shipping and third-party connections, and switch over on a Tuesday morning rather than a Friday evening.
Backups. We keep a complete export of your WordPress site, including the database, custom fields, plugin data and theme files, and recommend keeping the old site accessible on a subdomain for at least six months as a reference.
After launch. For six weeks we watch rankings, organic traffic, 404s, load speed and checkout completion. Some fluctuation during a migration is normal; the job is to catch anything that is not. Most clients then stay with us for ongoing Shopify work: SEO, speed, seasonal campaigns and the small changes a trading store needs every month.
It depends on two things: how many products you have, and which plugins your WordPress site uses. Plugins rarely have an exact Shopify match, so each one has to be replaced, rebuilt or dropped. We review both and send you a fixed quote before any work starts.
Yes. Products, customers, order history, blog posts and pages can all move to Shopify. Your design and any plugin features are rebuilt on Shopify rather than copied across, and every old URL is redirected so you keep your search rankings.
Back up your WordPress site, then set up a Shopify store to build in. Import products, customers and orders using a migration app or Shopify’s CSV import, rebuild your theme, replace each plugin with a Shopify app, then redirect every old URL and test checkout before you switch your domain. Our step-by-step migration guide covers each stage.
Export your products from WooCommerce as a CSV, reshape it to Shopify’s product CSV format and import it under Products, or use a migration app that reads WooCommerce directly. Either way, check variants, prices and images afterwards, because custom fields and plugin data rarely map across cleanly.
Protecting your rankings is built into how we work. We map a redirect for every URL that changes and recreate your key SEO settings on Shopify, so you hold on to the search visibility you have earned.
Yes. We bring your posts and pages across with their formatting and images, fix anything that breaks in transit, and redirect the old URLs so your content keeps performing.
Yes. We are based in Cork but work with clients throughout Ireland and internationally, handling the entire migration remotely.
Customer names, emails and contact details are imported, and historical orders are brought across for your records. Passwords do not transfer between platforms, so customers need to reset them or create new accounts after the move. We plan the email to your customers around that so it is expected rather than a surprise.
They handle basic data reasonably well, but they often miss custom fields, complex pricing, advanced SEO settings and plugin-specific functionality. We use them as a starting point, then go through everything by hand, which is where the real work and the real value is.
Managed hosting and security, built-in payments, inventory and shipping, reliable performance during traffic spikes, and far less ongoing technical maintenance. Your time goes back into selling rather than updating plugins and watching for vulnerabilities.
Get a free quote or Book a free 15-minute call and we will tell you what your migration involves.
