Transfer from Shopify to Wix: Step By Step Migration Instruction

Most guides to switching from Shopify to Wix blur two separate actions into one confusing sentence: export your products, then import them. What they don’t say clearly enough is that these happen in two different admin panels on two different platforms, in a specific order — export from Shopify, then import into Wix. Skipping that distinction is exactly where a lot of DIY migrations stall out on step one.

This guide fixes that, and goes further: there isn’t one way to move a Shopify store to Wix, there are three, and each has its own hidden limits that decide which one actually fits your store. We’ll walk through all three, help you pick, cover what moves and what doesn’t, and handle the part most Shopify-to-Wix guides skip entirely — protecting your product and category rankings with proper redirects.

Why Store Owners Make This Move

Shopify is eCommerce software built for stores that expect to keep scaling — multi-channel selling, deep app ecosystems, granular checkout customization. That depth is also the cost: a small or mid-sized store often pays for plan tiers, apps and developer time it doesn’t fully use. Wix’s built-in Wix Stores engine covers the same core ground — products, variants, payments, shipping — inside an all-in-one site builder, which is why owners of simpler catalogs move over when the Shopify feature set stops paying for itself. It’s rarely about Shopify being a bad platform; it’s about outgrowing the need for it. If you’re weighing Wix against other options rather than assuming Wix is automatically the right fit, our Shopify alternatives roundup lays out how the main contenders compare.

Three Ways to Actually Do This

Before touching either dashboard, know which path you’re on. They’re genuinely different processes, not variations on a theme.

The free CSV route is a genuine, complete option for small-to-medium catalogs. Cart2Cart exists for a real reason: once you’re past a few hundred SKUs or you need order history to survive the move, manually cleaning a CSV file stops being the fast option. And a specialist earns their fee mainly on the parts no tool automates well: custom Shopify apps, subscription products, multi-currency setups, or a catalog large enough that even Cart2Cart’s 1,000-item cap means running multiple batches.

Which Path Fits Your Store

Three questions get you to an answer faster than a long pros-and-cons list:

How many products are you moving? Under a few hundred, with simple variants, the free CSV import is realistic in an afternoon. Past that, or if your product options are complex, Cart2Cart or a specialist saves more time than it costs.

Do you need order history in Wix? The free CSV path doesn’t move orders at all. If customer service or reporting depends on historical orders being visible in the new store, Cart2Cart (with a Premium or Studio plan enabled for payments) or a specialist is the only realistic route — budget for that upgrade before you start.

Do you sell digital products? Neither the free CSV import nor a straightforward Cart2Cart migration handles digital products cleanly. If a meaningful share of your catalog is digital downloads, plan on rebuilding those listings manually or getting specific guidance from a Wix expert before you commit to a method.

If you’re additionally unsure whether Wix is even the right destination for a growing store, our full Shopify vs Wix comparison is worth a read before you invest time in any of these paths — and if you’re actually looking at the move in the opposite direction, we also cover switching from Wix to Shopify in detail.

Before You Start

• Export your product catalog from Shopify (Products › Export) and save it locally
• Export your customer list from Shopify, if you plan to bring contacts over
• Search site:yourdomain.com in Google to see which URLs are actually indexed — these are the ones that need redirects
• List every Shopify app and integration currently in use: reviews, subscriptions, loyalty programs, POS, email marketing
• Note anything you rely on that’s specific to Shopify’s plan tier — multi-currency selling, abandoned cart automation, wholesale pricing — since these need a Wix equivalent, not a straight import
• Save your existing SEO titles, meta descriptions and image alt text somewhere outside Shopify
• Decide which of the three migration paths fits, based on the filter above, before opening Wix

Setting Up Your Wix Store

Create your Wix account and choose a plan built for selling — a free or basic content plan won’t support Wix Stores or accept payments, and if you’re planning to migrate order history through Cart2Cart later, confirm the plan you pick actually allows payments now rather than discovering the gap mid-migration. Add Wix Stores to the site, pick a template in the eCommerce category with a structure close to your current Shopify layout — category count, whether you run a single storefront or several collections, how much homepage real estate goes to featured products — and treat the template as a starting point rather than a constraint, since none of them will match a custom Shopify theme exactly.

Set up currency, shipping zones, and tax settings before importing a single product, so the data you bring in lands in a store that’s actually configured to sell rather than a shell. Hold off publishing until content and redirects are ready. A store Google indexes mid-rebuild, with placeholder products and broken navigation, is harder to recover from than a short delay would have cost you.

Moving Products, Customers and Orders

This is the step the old advice around this migration tends to garble, so here it is in the correct order, split by path.

If you’re using the free CSV import:

1. In Shopify, go to Products › Export and download your catalog as a CSV.
2. In Wix, go to Store Products › Import and download Wix’s own template file — Shopify’s export and Wix’s import format aren’t the same, so you’ll be transferring data into the Wix structure rather than uploading Shopify’s file directly.
3. Map your Shopify fields into the Wix template: title, description, price, SKU, inventory, and images.
4. For images, you don’t necessarily need to download and re-upload every file — Wix’s import template accepts direct image URLs, so if your Shopify-hosted images are still live, you can paste those URLs in rather than handling files manually. Just do this before you cancel Shopify, since those URLs stop working once the store is gone.
5. Save and upload the completed file in Wix, then review the import summary — errors are listed row by row, and Wix lets you regenerate an error file to fix and re-upload just the failed rows.
6. Digital products won’t come through this way at all; recreate those listings manually afterward.

If you’re using Cart2Cart:

1. Add the Cart2Cart app from the Wix App Market and sign in or create an account.
2. Select Shopify as your source and Wix as your target, then connect your Shopify store’s API access when prompted.
3. Choose what to migrate — products, orders, coupons — keeping in mind the 1,000-item cap per migration on both products and orders.
4. Run the free demo migration first. This previews the result and gives you an exact price breakdown before anything is charged.
5. Review the demo results directly in your Wix dashboard (Store Products, Orders, Coupons tabs), then pay to complete the full migration once you’re satisfied.

Either way, customer passwords never transfer. Plan on a “reset your password” email to returning customers after launch rather than expecting seamless account continuity.

What Doesn’t Move, No Matter Which Path You Choose

Some things are outside the scope of any product-import tool, free or paid:

• Design. Your Shopify theme doesn’t translate to a Wix template. Rebuild the look inside a Wix template rather than expecting a visual carryover.
• Blog content. Neither CSV import nor Cart2Cart moves blog posts. There’s no direct blog export/import bridge between the two platforms in either direction — copy posts manually, or budget extra time if you have a large archive.
• Apps and integrations. Shopify apps for reviews, subscriptions, loyalty, or shipping don’t have Wix equivalents that migrate automatically. Each needs to be found in the Wix App Market and reconfigured from scratch, and a few — highly custom subscription logic or a niche B2B pricing app, for example — may not have a direct Wix equivalent at all, in which case a specialist can tell you faster than trial and error whether a workaround exists.
• Customer passwords. As noted above — encrypted on the source platform and not portable to any destination.
• Product option structure beyond what Wix’s template expects. The CSV template has specific fields for options and modifiers; a Shopify catalog with unusual option setups may need manual adjustment row by row rather than a clean bulk map.

Domain and Redirects

Once content is in place, handle the domain and the redirect map together — doing the domain first without redirects ready is how stores lose their indexed pages during the gap.

If your domain is registered through Shopify, you’ll need to unlock it and get an authorization (EPP) code before moving it to Wix, the same as with any domain transfer between registrars. If you’d rather not do a full registrar transfer, pointing your existing DNS records at Wix is usually faster and avoids the wait — just update your A record and CNAME rather than initiating a transfer, and confirm the site works on Wix before you change anything domain-related, so there’s no gap where neither store is live. Note that some Wix plans include a free domain, which is worth checking before you pay separately elsewhere — see how to get a free domain name on Wix for the specifics.

Then map your redirects. Shopify and Wix use different URL patterns by default, so every product and collection page needs an explicit 301:

Start with your highest-traffic product and category pages — the ones that showed up in your site:yourdomain.com search earlier — and don’t redirect everything to the homepage as a shortcut. That tells search engines the products are gone, not moved, which is worse for rankings than a slightly incomplete redirect map. If you want a deeper look at how to keep a Wix store visible in search once it’s live, our guide on getting a Wix site found and ranked on Google covers the ongoing SEO side beyond the migration itself.

Testing Before Launch

• Every migrated product displays correctly, with images loading
• Variants and pricing match the original Shopify listings
• A test order completes end to end, including payment
• Customer accounts prompt a password reset rather than failing silently
• All key redirects resolve correctly, with no 404s on your highest-traffic URLs
• Reconfigured apps (reviews, email capture, analytics) are firing correctly
• Mobile layout checked separately from desktop

How Long Will It Actually Take

Blog migration and redirect mapping are the two stages people consistently underbudget, regardless of catalog size — neither scales down just because the product side was quick.

Common Mistakes

• Doing the export and import steps in the wrong order or the wrong dashboard. Export happens in Shopify; import happens in Wix. Confusing the two is the single most common stall point.
• Skipping redirects entirely. A migrated catalog with no 301 mapping loses the SEO value of every ranking product and category page.
• Forgetting customers and orders exist. A catalog-only migration plan that ignores order history until launch day is a plan that gets rebuilt under pressure.
• Assuming one paid tool is the only option. Cart2Cart is a legitimate path, not the only one — for a small catalog, the free CSV import is genuinely sufficient, and paying for a migration you didn’t need is money better spent on a Wix Premium plan or professional design help elsewhere.
• Publishing before testing. A live store with unverified redirects and untested checkout is a worse outcome than a short delay.
• Cancelling Shopify immediately. Keep it active until orders, redirects and customer logins are all confirmed working on Wix.

FAQ

Conclusion

Switching from Shopify to Wix isn’t one process — it’s a choice between three, and picking the right one for your catalog size and order-history needs matters more than any individual step afterward. Get the export/import order right, don’t skip the redirect map, and be honest about whether your catalog fits inside the free CSV path or genuinely needs Cart2Cart or a specialist. That combination, not the tool you pick, is what actually protects your store’s traffic through the move.