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There are many reasons why ecommerce site owners might decide to migrate from Shopify to WooCommerce. It could be the unlimited customization, the absence of transaction fees, or the opportunity for full ownership of your ecommerce platform.
While it’s an exciting prospect to migrate platforms, store owners should plan carefully. The transition from a hands-off SaaS platform (Shopify) to a self-hosted platform (WooCommerce) comes with a significant shift not just in features but in responsibility.
This article outlines the essential, often-overlooked questions that need to be answered honestly to assess your resources, budget, and technical comfort level before taking the crucial step of migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce.
Shopify handles many of your day-to-day basics including security, hosting, and core updates, automatically. WooCommerce requires you to take ownership of all three important website responsibilities.
You will need to determine if you will hire a managed hosting solution, contract a developer for maintenance, or handle updates and security yourself. When considering managed hosting, our WooCommerce Hosting Guide can help you find the best WooCommerce hosting provider for your ecommerce store.
With Shopify, hosting is included with your plan. WooCommerce operates differently, requiring you to choose and manage a high-performance host yourself.
Research managed WooCommerce hosting providers that deliver reliability and scalability. As part of your research, you will need to factor in the monthly or annual costs of a hosting provider into your budget. Pressable has a variety of plans to choose from for your WooCommerce hosting needs.
While Shopify simplifies ecommerce for its clients, that ease-of-use comes with limits. Many WordPress site owners are drawn to WooCommerce because it grants code-level control, but this does introduce additional complexity into the ecommerce platform management experience.
As you consider your migration, try to determine the specific “limiting” feature of your Shopify account that bothers you most. You may decide that this limit, while annoying, may not be critical and that your migration can wait.
Any migration to a new platform comes with a risk of broken links and lost SEO ranking. Before you commit to a migration, plan and test a detailed 301 redirect strategy covering products, pages, and blogs. This is a critical step that needs to be in place before your move to WooCommerce.
With Shopify, your costs are simple: subscription + transaction fee. Your WooCommerce cost is more layered: hosting + premium plugins + maintenance.
To get a good idea of how your TCO will change, list the cost of hosting, premium themes and plugins (such as advanced filtering and subscriptions), security services, and developer hours. Compare your expected WooCommerce TCO to your current Shopify plan.
While WooCommerce does not have a platform fee, you will still pay the gateway fee for providers like Stripe and PayPal.
Review transaction fees carefully to ensure that projected savings justify the switch. Verify if the savings from eliminating Shopify’s transaction fee penalty (if you are not currently using Shopify Payments) justify your migration to WooCommerce.
In your migration, you will export and import products, orders, and customer data. Budget for a migration tool such as Cart2Cart or dedicated developer time to manage the move. Also, factor in the cost of potential site downtime, a risk with any migration.
With Shopify, you have access to easy, one-click apps. WooCommerce uses plugins to add these capabilities, giving you flexibility but requiring careful selection.
Catalog your current Shopify apps that you rely on. Then research and identify the exact WooCommerce plugin replacements and their costs.
One of the best use cases for WooCommerce is when it’s paired with a powerful content platform, WordPress. If your growth strategy relies heavily on content, blogging, and complex content types, migrating to WooCommerce is a strong fit.
As a managed WordPress hosting platform, Pressable offers optimized WooCommerce performance and built-in scalability to support your growth strategy.
Migrating from a SaaS solution to a self-hosted platform is typically viewed as a move toward long-term control. As you consider your migration, ensure that the core reasons for your move are aligned strategically with your long-term plans and are not simply temporary frustrations.
Migrating to a new ecommerce platform is not an easy choice. In deciding to move from Shopify to WooCommerce, you are taking on greater complexity in exchange for more control and flexibility.
Often, a successful migration is dependent on how clearly the site owner understands the required changes. Answering these questions about resources, costs, and strategy is an important step in preparing your online store for a successful future.
Use this list of questions to help plan your platform migration and ensure a smooth transition.
Pressable makes it easy to do mistake-free WooCommerce website migrations to our hosting platform. We offer three options to choose from. You can manage the process with our Automated Pressable Migration Plugin. If you are the DIY type, we allow you to manually migrate your site over. Or you can take advantage of our seamless white glove assisted migration service and allow our Customer Success Team to manage your migration.
Pressable—part of the Automattic family that also includes WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, and WooCommerce—is staffed by WordPress experts with the skills and knowledge to effectively manage your WordPress site. If you’re thinking about switching to managed WordPress hosting, schedule a demo to see how Pressable can support your continued optimization and growth.
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