Migrating from WooCommerce, OpenCart or Magento to Shopify

Moving an online store is not a single-file export. Some data transfers cleanly, some needs manual work, and some doesn't transfer at all. This page covers all three, so you know what you are signing up for before you start.

When migration is worth it

Switching platforms makes sense when your problem is recurring, not a one-off. Three situations where it almost always pays off:

• The store goes down or slows down at peak times — Black Friday, or an ad that takes off. If you call your hosting provider or developer every time, you pay for this problem every month in lost orders.
• Every change goes through an outside person. If you can't change a banner or launch a promotion yourself, your response time depends on someone else.
• The number of plugins is out of control. Twenty plugins mean twenty sources of conflicts with every WordPress update.

When it isn't worth it. If the store runs reliably and your only problem is the design, migration is an expensive way to solve something that costs less to fix. If you have complex logic for B2B pricing, subscriptions or a warehouse system integration, migration is a project, not a task — plan it instead of trying it out.

What transfers and what doesn't

Transfers cleanly

Products with descriptions, images, prices, variants and stock levels. Categories and collections. Customer profiles with names and addresses. Order history. Blog posts and pages.

Transfers, but with manual work

URLs. WooCommerce uses /product/ and /product-category/, while Shopify uses /products/ and /collections/ and doesn't let you change them. Every old URL needs a 301 redirect. If your URLs contain Cyrillic, it gets transliterated and the old links change. This is the most common reason a store loses traffic after a migration.

Doesn't transfer

Customer passwords. No platform exports hashed passwords. Your customers receive an invitation to reactivate their accounts — this should be planned and announced, not a surprise.

Reviews don't come over on their own either. They are exported separately and imported into the system you will be using.

One more thing that is rarely mentioned: old orders come into Shopify as records, but you can't issue refunds on them, because the payment didn't go through Shopify. If you have open returns, finish them on the old platform.

What changes specifically for a Bulgarian store

Cash on delivery and couriers. Shopify has no built-in connection to Econt and Speedy. It is done through an app — dostavi.bg, Fulfillvam, Izprati BG and Fulfillmate are the options that work in this market. They add office or locker selection at checkout, pull live rates and print waybills. It is a real monthly cost that needs to be in your numbers before you migrate.

Card payments. Shopify Payments is available to companies registered in Bulgaria and pays out in euros. If you prefer another processor, Shopify charges an additional transaction fee — 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced.

Invoices and VAT. Shopify doesn't issue Bulgarian invoices by default. This is solved either through the same courier app or through a connection to your accounting software. Sort it out before launch, not after the first order.

Discounts. If you show a strikethrough price, the law requires it to be the lowest price you sold at in the last 30 days. In a migration, this means the person setting up promotions needs to know the old price history — it doesn't transfer automatically.

How a migration works

First, an audit of the old store: how many products, how many variants, which URLs bring in traffic, which features are actually used. Second, the new store is built entirely on the side — the old one keeps taking orders the whole time. Third, a test import of the data and a check of what broke along the way. Fourth comes the redirect map. Fifth is the domain switch, which takes minutes, followed by monitoring indexing over the next few weeks.

The old store isn't switched off on launch day. It stays live for a while, until you are sure nothing is missing. That is how we worked on the full rebuild of Oferti4ka — the old theme stayed in place as a way back.

The most common mistakes

• Launching without a redirect map. The main cause of a drop in organic traffic, and almost always preventable.
• Migrating everything. If you have 4000 products and 600 of them sell, a migration is the right moment to clean up the catalog, not to carry the clutter over.
• Forgotten automated emails. Order confirmation, abandoned cart, shipping notification — all of them have to be set up again, and in Bulgarian.
• Launching in peak season. You don't migrate a week before Black Friday.

If you are considering a move like this, see what a custom build looks like or tell us about your case. We'll send you a written plan.