Switch from Shopify or WooCommerce to SellStein

Migrating from Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or Wix to SellStein is a weekend job, not a quarter-long project. Here's the playbook.

Before you start

Two things to pin down first:

• A migration date. Pick a low-traffic day (most stores: Sunday morning). You'll need 4-6 focused hours. Don't try to migrate during a sale
• A rollback plan. Keep the old store online (just not pointed at your domain) for 30 days. If anything goes sideways, flip DNS back

What we import

Migration → Import. Connect your old platform via API key (Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce) or upload a CSV (everything else). We bring across:

• Products: full catalogue with variants, images, descriptions, pricing, inventory levels
• Customers: name, email, addresses, lifetime spend, marketing consent flags
• Orders: full history with line items, shipping, payment status, fulfilment status
• Reviews: with original timestamps and customer attribution
• Discounts: active and expired codes, with usage history
• Pages: about, FAQ, policy pages. Converted to SellStein's CMS

What we cannot import:

• Saved payment methods on customers (PCI rules. They re-enter cards on first new order)
• Subscription billing schedules from third-party Shopify apps (those reset; subscribers get a "we moved" email and confirm again)
• Custom theme code (you'll rebuild visually in our editor; for most stores this is a 1-2 hour job)

Redirect strategy

Settings → SEO → 301 Redirects → Bulk import. Upload a CSV of old-URL → new-URL pairs. We auto-generate this from the migration data. Most product slugs come across identically, so 80% of redirects are no-ops.

Critical redirects to verify by hand:

• /products/* on Shopify (we use the same path)
• /collections/* on Shopify → /category/*
• /pages/* (same path)
• /products/[handle].js JSON endpoints if you had those embedded externally

Test 50 random old URLs after import. Anything 404'ing in the first week is killing your SEO until you fix it.

DNS cutover

When you're ready to flip the live domain, change the DNS records (see "Connect a custom domain" guide) and wait 5-30 minutes. We continue to serve from sellstein.com for the first hour as a safety net. If everything looks good, that auto-disables.

After cutover

• Update every webhook endpoint pointed at your old store
• Update Google Merchant Center, Meta catalog, TikTok shop with new product URLs
• Tell email subscribers in your next campaign. Soft mention, not a panicked announcement
• Monitor Settings → Health for the first 72 hours; we surface anything anomalous (404 spikes, payment failures, slow pages)

When migration goes wrong

The two recoverable failure modes:

• Catalogue is wrong. Re-run the import with "Replace" mode. Wipes the new catalogue and starts over. Customers and orders are preserved
• Some redirects 404. Add them manually at Settings → SEO → 301 Redirects. There's no time pressure; Google will re-crawl on its own schedule

We have a migration team that does this with you for free on the Growth plan and above. Drop into /contact and ask for the migration concierge. They'll book a 30-minute call and do most of the work live.