WooCommerce → Shopify Plus, without the traffic loss.
We've migrated stores up to 250K SKUs from WooCommerce to Shopify Plus without losing organic rankings — because the SEO continuity work happens before launch, not after the dashboards turn red. Built for growth-stage brands tired of paying the WordPress maintenance tax.
WooCommerce stops scaling long before you stop growing.
Plugin stack is a single point of failure.
Every Woo store is one obscure plugin update from a checkout outage. Yours has 23 of them. Compatibility is a part-time job, and the part-time job is yours.
Performance is unfixable on rented hosting.
WP-Engine, Kinsta, Pantheon — they all hit a ceiling. WooCommerce wasn't built for the traffic shape of a growth-stage DTC store, and no caching layer fixes a checkout that runs uncached PHP queries on add-to-cart.
PCI scope is on you, not the platform.
Shopify handles PCI-DSS. WooCommerce hands you a security audit, a vulnerability scanner, and the responsibility for what happens when a plugin gets compromised at 2am.
Every line item, engineered before launch.
12+ deliverables — data, SEO, performance, and the operational handoff.Full data migration + SEO continuity.
Products, variants, customers, orders, blog posts, categories — migrated with 301 redirect maps, schema preserved, and traffic monitored daily in Search Console for 90 days post-launch. We've migrated stores up to 250K SKUs without traffic loss.
WordPress content migration.
Editorial blog, lookbooks, custom post types, ACF data — mapped to Shopify-native or Pantheon-hosted setup, depending on how content-heavy you actually are.
Plugin sprawl → Shopify-native.
Replace 25+ Woo plugins with native Shopify capabilities + a tight app stack. Most clients drop to 6–8 apps post-migration.
Payment gateway migration
Stripe / Authorize.net / PayPal — re-tokenized to Shopify Payments where possible.
Klaviyo / email continuity
Customer record + flow migration with subscriber-status preservation.
Subscriptions (if WC Subs)
WooCommerce Subscriptions → Recharge or Stay AI with billing continuity.
Markets: cross-border + tax
Multi-currency, automated VAT/duty, country-specific pricing.
Custom theme on the brand
New Plus theme — not a Woo lift-and-shift. Built around your brand system.
Staging + soft-launch
Full staging environment, internal QA, soft-launch to a percentage of traffic.
90-day traffic monitoring
Daily Search Console + GA4 watch, regression analysis, immediate fixes.
Four phases, engineered against traffic loss.
Start a migration BlueprintBlueprint the migration risk.
- WooCommerce technical audit + plugin inventory
- SEO baseline: every URL, ranking, and traffic source
- Data dependency map (custom tables, ACF, custom post types)
- Migration risk assessment + financial case
Migration plan, URL by URL.
- Catalog model: SKUs, variants, B2B (if applicable)
- 301 redirect map — every legacy URL → new URL
- Theme architecture + brand system rebuild
- Custom integration spec (apps, Klaviyo, payment, ERP)
Shopify Plus build, Woo data migrated.
- Custom Plus theme on brand system
- Data migration into staging environment
- Plugin replacement / app integration
- 301 redirects deployed + DNS cutover plan
90-day post-launch watch.
- Daily Search Console + GA4 monitoring
- Traffic regression analysis + immediate fixes
- App performance optimization
- Hand-off to operations retainer or your team
Sorella migrated 18K SKUs from Woo to Shopify Plus — without losing a ranking.
Two years on WooCommerce, four agencies, $4,200/mo in hosting and maintenance. We migrated the catalog, the wholesale portal, and the editorial blog onto a single Shopify Plus store in 11 weeks. Organic traffic was +6% the month after launch.
“They rebuilt the whole engine while we kept selling. The brand finally matches what the product has always been.”
Honest fit
When migrating now makes sense — and when it doesn’t.
Migrate now if
- Doing $1M+ in revenue on WooCommerce — the cost of staying outweighs the cost of moving.
- Plugin stack hits compatibility issues every WP/PHP update cycle.
- Considering Shopify Plus for B2B, international, or retail POS — Plus is the inflection point.
- Hosting bill creeping past $500/mo on managed Woo hosting (Kinsta, WP-Engine, Pantheon).
- You've outgrown a part-time WordPress dev and you don't want to hire a full team to keep it running.
Hold off if
- Under $300K — the migration tax outweighs the platform benefit at low GMV.
- Heavy custom WP development you're not ready to leave behind — start with Plus B2B instead.
- Already on a managed Woo solution that's working — don't fix what isn't broken.
- Roadmap doesn't include B2B, POS, or international expansion in the next 12 months.
Three ways in. All of them de-risk the migration.
Migration Blueprint
- WooCommerce technical audit
- Plugin inventory + risk assessment
- SEO baseline + URL inventory
- 301 redirect map (URL → URL)
- Migration roadmap + financial case
- Goes/no-goes for the build
Migration build
- Custom Shopify Plus theme on brand system
- Full data migration (products, customers, orders, blog)
- 301 redirects + SEO continuity engineered
- Plugin → app + native swap
- WC Subscriptions → Recharge / Stay AI (if applicable)
- Klaviyo + payment gateway migration
- Staging environment + soft-launch QA
- 90-day post-launch traffic monitoring
Build + Plus retainer
- Everything in Migration build
- Plus partner support tier post-launch
- Monthly CRO + lifecycle sprints
- Performance + uptime monitoring
- Quarterly business review
Migrations that don’t crater organic traffic.
40+ five-star reviews · Clutch · Shopify · Google“Commence Studio is a smart, thoughtful team. They do a great job of understanding the business and use cases of every project.”
“We felt that the Commence team truly understood what made our brand tick and how we could differentiate our firm.”
“Working with artists like them has been a pleasure — they take their craft as seriously as we do our food.”
“They delivered everything they promised. They were great at understanding what we were trying to communicate and conveyed information in a new way.”
“A team of young professionals delivering high-quality, modern work in a flexible environment. They made it easy to recommend changes as needed.”
“They created something better than what I could have articulated. The graphic art they produce stood out far before I engaged them.”
“They're a cut above other agencies I've seen. I got exactly what I wanted and have recommended them to others.”
“We've gotten really positive feedback — everyone loved it. Branding is like architecture; you shouldn't have to explain it.”
“Communication was clear and concise. Many team members worked together to create a seamless end result.”
Things people ask before they migrate.
Will we lose SEO traffic during the migration?+
Not if we run the migration correctly. Every legacy URL gets mapped to its Shopify equivalent, ships as a 301 redirect, and we monitor Search Console daily for the first 90 days. Stores migrating with us typically see traffic stable or up within 30 days. The 5-15% temporary dip you see at agencies that skip the SEO continuity work happens because nobody mapped the redirects up-front.
How long does a typical Woo → Shopify migration take?+
8–14 weeks for the build, depending on catalog size, custom WP development, and B2B/POS complexity. Stores with simple WooCommerce setups (under 5K SKUs, standard plugin stack) finish in 8–10. Stores with WC Subscriptions, custom B2B portals, or 50K+ SKUs land at 12–14. Add a Blueprint up-front and you’re looking at 10–16 weeks total.
What happens to our custom WordPress functionality?+
We audit every custom function during the Blueprint. Some translates directly to Shopify (custom fields → metafields, ACF → metaobjects, custom post types → metaobjects or content sections). Some doesn’t (heavy WP plugins) and gets replaced with native Shopify capabilities or apps. The ones that absolutely require WordPress (editorial blog with author profiles, custom workflows) we keep on a Pantheon-hosted WP instance feeding Shopify via API. Best-of-both-worlds.
Do we need to retrain our team?+
Yes — but most teams find it lighter, not heavier. Shopify admin is friendlier than WP admin for non-technical staff. We provide 2 hours of recorded training + a 30-day Q&A window post-launch. Most operators are comfortable in Shopify within a week of using it daily.
What does it actually cost?+
Migration build is $45K–$185K depending on complexity, and the Blueprint ($3,500) is credited 100% toward it. Most growth-stage clients land between $65K and $120K. Compare that to 6 months of WooCommerce maintenance (hosting + plugin licenses + dev retainer + downtime cost) and the migration usually pays itself back within 8–12 months.
Can you migrate WooCommerce Subscriptions to Shopify?+
Yes — usually to Recharge or Stay AI. We migrate active subscriptions with billing continuity (token-level subscription state preserved where the gateway permits). Customers see a one-time email letting them know the management URL changed, but their charge cadence and cards-on-file aren’t affected.
We have 50K SKUs. Is Shopify going to handle that?+
Yes. Shopify Plus handles up to 100K SKUs natively and 250K+ with proper merchandising architecture. We’ve migrated stores at that scale and run them with sub-1.5s LCP. The constraints are usually around variants and metafields rather than raw SKU count.
What about our existing Klaviyo / email integrations?+
Klaviyo migrates with the customer record — subscriber status, segments, and flow membership all preserved. Klaviyo’s Shopify integration is dramatically tighter than its Woo integration, so most clients see flow performance improve post-migration as on-site events get richer data.
How quickly can we start?+
Migration Blueprints typically kick off within 2 weeks of a signed agreement. Migration builds scope and start within 4–6 weeks of Blueprint approval. We run two migration engagements in parallel, so timing is usually the limiting factor.
Tired of debugging plugins? Get the migration plan.
A 30-minute call to scope the migration, plus a $3,500 Blueprint that maps every redirect and every risk. Most teams find out the migration costs less than 6 months of WooCommerce maintenance.
