If you've been selling on Shopify for a while, you've probably reached the point where fees, customization limits or lack of control over the code are holding you back. WooCommerce and PrestaShop are more flexible alternatives, but the worry is understandable: how do you migrate your online store without losing SEO or sales?
A poorly executed migration can mean drops in organic traffic, broken URLs, order problems and, in short, weeks of chaos. The good news is that with solid planning and careful technical execution, moving from Shopify to WooCommerce or PrestaShop while keeping your rankings, customers and data is entirely doable.
In this guide we take a practical, SME-focused look at how to prepare, carry out and consolidate the migration. We'll cover what to protect for SEO, how to move products and orders, how to handle redirects and when it makes sense to connect your new store to an ERP or CRM to work more efficiently.
1. Before you touch anything: when migrating makes sense and what you want to achieve
Before thinking about plugins or backups, you need to be crystal clear on why you're migrating. Moving from Shopify to WooCommerce or PrestaShop takes time and money; it's only worth it if it solves real problems or opens up clear opportunities.
- Costs: platform and payment gateway fees, monthly paid apps, plan limitations.
- Flexibility: limits on customizing checkout, pricing rules, B2B, multi-store, languages or complex taxes.
- Ownership of code and data: needing full control to integrate with an ERP, a CRM, your own SaaS or in-house developments.
- Scalability: large catalogs, multiple warehouses, B2B operations, marketplaces or international expansion.
Write down your migration goals. For example: "cut recurring costs by 30%", "offer custom B2B pricing", "sync stock with the ERP in real time", "improve speed and Core Web Vitals". That document will be your compass for choosing between WooCommerce and PrestaShop, deciding which modules you need and what should be custom development.
The better you define your goals before migrating, the easier it is to decide what to replicate as is, what to improve and what to leave behind.
2. Pre-migration SEO audit: what you absolutely must protect
If you want to migrate your online store without losing SEO, the first step is knowing what ranks well today and which URLs are critical. A simple list of pages isn't enough; you need a detailed SEO inventory.
Key elements of the SEO inventory
- A complete list of indexed URLs (products, categories, content pages, blog, brand pages…).
- Organic traffic per URL (Google Analytics / GA4 + Search Console).
- Main keywords per URL (Search Console or SEO tools).
- Metadata: titles, meta descriptions, H1/H2 headings.
- Critical content: product descriptions, category copy, FAQs.
- Important images (file name, alt text, size).
- Relevant internal links (menus, breadcrumbs, related products, links from the blog).
This inventory lets you build a 1:1 redirect map between Shopify and your new store. Wherever possible, each old URL should point to the closest equivalent new URL, without redirect chains or generic pages in between.
Use it to spot existing problems too: duplicate content, uncontrolled URL parameters, wrong canonicals, near-empty product pages… Migration is the perfect excuse to clean up and improve your on-page SEO instead of just copying errors from one platform to another.
3. Choosing between WooCommerce and PrestaShop on business criteria
Neither WooCommerce nor PrestaShop is "better" in absolute terms; what matters is which fits your operations. If you already work with WordPress and content, WooCommerce is usually the natural next step. If your focus is a large catalog and advanced pure-ecommerce features, PrestaShop may have the edge.
Some criteria many SMEs use to decide:
- Content strategy: if your blog, guides and content SEO are central, WooCommerce + WordPress usually makes management simpler.
- Catalog and pricing rules: for very large catalogs, multiple price lists or B2B with customer- or group-specific pricing, PrestaShop offers very mature modules.
- Countries and taxes: if you sell to several countries with complex tax rules, check carefully which module or development you'll need on each platform.
- In-house team: if your team is already used to WordPress, the switch to WooCommerce will be smoother.
At Interconecta we work as both a WooCommerce agency and a PrestaShop agency, and the decision usually comes down to operations rather than tech trends. For a deeper comparison, our guide WooCommerce vs PrestaShop vs Shopify in 2026: the definitive guide to choosing a platform takes a more thorough look at the real pros and cons.
4. Migration plan: data, timelines and a test environment
An orderly migration starts with a project plan with clear phases, owners and approximate dates. The goal is to minimize the time you have to freeze changes in Shopify and avoid sales downtime.
What data to migrate (and what isn't always worth moving)
- Products: titles, descriptions, prices, combinations/variants, attributes, categories, tags, images.
- Customers: contact details, addresses, relevant groups or segments.
- Orders: order history and statuses, at least for the last 12–24 months.
- Coupons and important discount rules.
- Content: information pages (shipping, returns, about us), categories with SEO copy, blog posts.
Sometimes it doesn't make sense to migrate ten years of order history, especially if it would make the project more expensive or complicated. You can keep the full history exported in your ERP or in a separate database, and sync in detail only the recent years you need for customer service and reporting.
It's best to set up a staging environment first (a private test server) where you deploy WooCommerce or PrestaShop, build any custom developments and test the data import. Only when everything works properly is it replicated in production and the DNS switched.
Never migrate directly on the live store without first testing the data import, the payment gateways and the redirects in a test environment.
5. How to migrate your online store without losing SEO: key technical steps
Now for the core: the technical steps that make the difference between a clean migration and a disaster. The goal is for Google to understand that your content has moved but is still the same (or better), and for users to find what they're looking for without 404 errors.
URL structure and 301 redirects
Ideally, keep the same URL structure you had on Shopify. That isn't always 100% possible, but the closer you get, the less you'll rely on redirects. If you need to change the structure, create a detailed old URL → new URL mapping.
- Use permanent 301 redirects, never 302, to tell Google the change is final.
- Avoid redirect chains (URL A → B → C). Always go straight from A → C.
- Redirect to the most relevant URL possible: product to product, category to category. Only use the home page as a last resort.
- Check for conflicts with server rules or redirect plugins.
Content, metadata and structured data
To avoid losing SEO, replicate and improve your on-page signals:
- Keep the titles and meta descriptions that are already working, unless you know exactly how to improve them.
- Keep H1s similar and avoid changing keywords without a strategy.
- Make sure product descriptions and category copy are imported in full, without losing formatting or content.
- Set up product structured data (price, availability, ratings) with reliable plugins or custom development.
- Make sure images keep sensible file names and descriptive alt text.
Speed, Core Web Vitals and crawling
Switching platforms is an opportunity to improve technical performance. A well-configured WooCommerce or PrestaShop store, with the right hosting and optimized code, can be faster than your current Shopify store, but it doesn't happen automatically.
- Choose hosting that specializes in your platform, not an overloaded generic shared plan.
- Limit the number of plugins and modules: a few good ones beat many mediocre ones.
- Optimize images, static assets and caching (at server and application level).
- Generate a clean XML sitemap and submit it in Search Console.
- Configure robots.txt correctly so you don't block critical parts of the store.
6. Migrating integrations, payments and logistics without breaking operations
Beyond SEO, your store lives on taking payments, shipping products and serving customers. A migration means reviewing every existing integration in detail and planning how to replicate or improve it in WooCommerce or PrestaShop.
- Payment gateways (Stripe, Redsys, PayPal): reconfigure credentials, callbacks and return pages.
- Shipping platforms and carriers: labels, tracking, pickup points, shipping cost rules.
- Email marketing tools: lists, post-purchase automations, cart recovery.
- Chat, WhatsApp Business, customer service and ticketing systems.
- Marketplace integrations (Amazon, eBay…), if any.
It's a good moment to ask whether it still makes sense to maintain each integration separately, or whether it's time to bring everything together through an ERP/CRM and APIs. At Interconecta, for example, we build two-way ERP ↔ online store integrations (stock, products, orders and customers in real time) so you no longer depend on multiple fragile connectors.
With a cleaner architecture, changing ecommerce platforms doesn't mean rebuilding your bank, warehouse or accounting integrations from scratch: you only adapt the connector between the new store and your central system.
7. When should you integrate your new store with an ERP or CRM?
Many SMEs use the move away from Shopify to go a step further: connecting WooCommerce or PrestaShop to an ERP or CRM and leaving behind spreadsheets, duplicate data and manual tasks. It isn't always needed in the first phase, but there are clear signs your business is ready for it.
- You manage stock across several warehouses or physical stores.
- You have a large catalog with multiple price lists, customer-specific prices or complex discounts.
- You spend too much time reconciling payments, issuing invoices and balancing the books.
- You want your sales team to have a 360° view of each customer: purchases, incidents, opportunities.
- You're preparing to expand internationally, or to add a B2B channel or multiple stores.
In those cases, integrating your new store with an ERP such as Odoo, Dolibarr, ERPNext or FacturaScripts lets you centralize products, customers, orders, invoices and logistics. You can also add an integrated CRM to manage leads, opportunities and campaigns without depending on closed SaaS licenses.
If you'd like to explore this further, our blog has the guide How to choose an ERP for SMEs in Spain: Odoo, Dolibarr, ERPNext and FacturaScripts compared, where we look at real options and when a custom implementation makes sense. And to push efficiency further, we recommend Automating administrative tasks in an SME: a practical guide with RPA and no-code examples, which shows how to automate invoices, expenses, contracts or bank reconciliation using the data your store already generates.
8. Monitoring after the switch: what to watch in the first few weeks
The migration doesn't end when you point the domain at the new store. The first 4–8 weeks are critical for fine-tuning, catching errors and consolidating the new SEO and operational setup.
- 404 errors and misconfigured redirects (Search Console and server logs).
- Total organic traffic and traffic per key URL: expect small fluctuations, but not sharp unexplained drops.
- Conversion rate and purchase funnel: if conversion drops, review usability, trust signals, load times and checkout messages.
- Indexing of new URLs and deindexing of old ones: check coverage in Search Console.
- Paid campaign performance (Google Ads, social ads) and conversion tracking.
Any further changes (new templates, major design changes, changes to the category structure) should be planned and measured. Don't change too many variables at once in the weeks after the migration, so you can clearly attribute the impact of each decision.
9. When does it make sense to get professional help with your migration?
If your catalog is small, organic traffic isn't critical and you don't rely on many integrations, a simpler migration may be an option. But as soon as established SEO, B2B, several countries or complex back-office operations come into play, one mistake can cost you months of work.
At Interconecta we don't sell standard templates: we first analyze your operations, your data and your rankings, then propose a custom migration to WooCommerce or PrestaShop, integrated with your ERP/CRM where needed. We work with our own in-house team in Spain, you own the code, and we fix the timeline and budget before we start, with measurable KPIs from day one.
If you're at the point where you know you need to leave Shopify but don't want to gamble with your SEO or your sales, we can help with a free, no-obligation analysis and assessment. We'll review your current situation and goals and propose a realistic migration plan. You can write to us through our contact page or explore our other services.