WooCommerce to Shoptet migration

Most stores make this move because running WordPress well costs time: plugin updates, hosting, caching, security and backups all land on the merchant or their developer. Shoptet is a hosted platform built for the Czech and Slovak market, so local carriers, payment gateways, invoicing and feeds for comparison sites such as Heureka and Zboží.cz are available natively or as add-ons, and several WooCommerce plugins usually become unnecessary.

The trade-off is flexibility. Shoptet's product, content and checkout model is narrower than WordPress, and custom PHP logic has nowhere to run. If you sell mainly outside CZ and SK, rely on complex custom checkout rules, or run WordPress primarily as a publication, compare other targets first. We say so in the assessment when Shoptet is not the right fit.

WooCommerce keeps products as WordPress posts, with global attributes (such as pa_size), local attributes and variations as child posts. Shoptet expects a structured import in which products, variants, parameters, categories and availability are defined in its own columns, and every product needs a unique product code.

Variants are the main technical issue on this route. Shoptet's own help for WooCommerce transfers notes that a plain WooCommerce export does not import variants correctly: they have to be built through Shoptet's full export and import format or set up against variant templates. We therefore do not rely on the default CSV. We extract variations from the database, normalize attribute values (for example "XL", "xl" and "X-Large"), expand variations set to "Any" value into explicit variants, and generate an import file that matches Shoptet's variant parameters.

Attributes used for filtering become Shoptet filtering parameters, which are created and named before the import so filters work on launch day. Custom fields from Advanced Custom Fields or other plugins have no automatic target; each is decided on purpose as a parameter, part of the description, or dropped. Prices with and without VAT, VAT rates, stock and availability labels are checked against how you invoice in CZ and SK.

Both systems support nested categories, so the WooCommerce tree can usually be carried over. We still review it: WooCommerce stores often accumulate categories created only for filtering or campaigns, and product tags that duplicate categories. On Shoptet, a clean hierarchy plus parameters for filtering generally works better than a deep tree. Category descriptions, images and SEO fields from Yoast or Rank Math move with the category. Any category we remove needs a redirect target, so removals are agreed with you.

Customer accounts with contact details, billing and delivery addresses and company data (IČO and DIČ where stored) can be prepared for import into Shoptet. Customer passwords are a different matter: WordPress stores hashes (phpass or bcrypt depending on the version), and whether Shoptet can accept them for your account is something we confirm during the assessment. Plan for customers setting a new password on first login, and for a clear message explaining why.

Order history matters for returns, warranty claims and repeat customers. Whether and how orders are imported depends on the tooling available for your Shoptet plan, including paid add-ons from the Shoptet marketplace, so we assess it per project. Where orders are imported they are history for reference, not live orders to process again, and we keep the WooCommerce order number as the reference. Stored payment methods are never moved.

WordPress permalinks are free-form: /product/{slug}/, /product-category/{slug}/, a custom shop base or date-based blog paths. Shoptet generates its own URL paths, so most product, category and article URLs will change. Every indexed URL that changes needs a 301 redirect to its Shoptet equivalent.

We build the list from a crawl of the live store plus Google Search Console, analytics and backlinks, and map each URL to the closest relevant page rather than the homepage. Shoptet manages redirects in its admin, supports 301 and 302 redirects and a CSV import, and its help recommends entering paths with a trailing slash; we follow its format and test every rule before launch. After launch we recrawl the old URL list, check 404s and chains, and submit the new sitemap in Search Console. Redirects protect URL continuity; nobody can guarantee rankings.

Every active plugin gets a decision: native Shoptet feature, Shoptet add-on, external integration, or dropped. On this route many local plugins are replaced by Shoptet's own tools: carrier and pickup-point integrations (for example Zásilkovna or PPL), Czech payment gateways, invoicing, and XML feeds for Heureka, Zboží.cz and Google Merchant Center. Feeds are regenerated from Shoptet and resubmitted, and category mapping in comparison sites is checked, because product IDs and URLs change.

Reviews, loyalty points, subscriptions, memberships and wholesale pricing come from plugins with their own tables; each is assessed for an import path or a Shoptet add-on, and some are rebuilt by process rather than migrated. Blog posts and pages move as text and images into Shoptet's articles and pages; page-builder layouts are rebuilt in the Shoptet template. Accounting, ERP and warehouse connections are reconnected and tested before launch, and access to Shoptet's API depends on your plan, which affects custom integrations.

We audit the WordPress database and plugin list rather than only the WooCommerce CSV export, because variations and plugin data often sit in postmeta and custom tables. The output is a mapping you approve: product codes, variants and variant parameters, filtering parameters, categories, customer fields and content.

The trial import goes into a Shoptet store before launch and is reconciled: product and variant counts, prices with VAT, stock, a set of products checked by a person, feeds validated and redirects tested against the crawl list. Automation helps compare source and target; a person approves what reaches production. At launch we agree a short freeze, import new orders, customers and stock changes since the trial, move the domain following Shoptet's process, and activate redirects. Post-launch checks cover test orders, invoices, carrier labels, feeds and Search Console.

WooCommerce variants do not import from the default export and need a prepared import. Password transfer and order import depend on Shoptet's options for your plan and are confirmed in the assessment. Custom PHP logic, page-builder layouts and some plugin features have no direct Shoptet equivalent. Most URLs change, so the redirect map is part of the project, not an optional extra.