How do you migrate from Etsy to Shopify?

At some point, many Etsy sellers start doing the math. The listing fees, the transaction fees, the payment processing fees, the offsite ads fee you never signed up for — it adds up to a meaningful slice of every sale, paid to a platform that controls your search ranking, your customer relationships, and your shop's future. The thought arrives quietly: what if I had my own store?

Short answer: migrating from Etsy to Shopify means exporting your listings, customers, and orders as CSV files from Etsy's Shop Manager, importing them into Shopify, rebuilding your storefront, and setting up payments, shipping, and taxes. The technical part takes an afternoon. The strategic part — deciding what to keep, what to change, and whether to run both — is what actually determines whether the move pays off.

You do not need to be technical. You need to be careful.

Before you move: decide what you are actually doing

There are three versions of this migration, and they are very different commitments.

Full migration means closing or pausing your Etsy shop and moving everything to Shopify. You get lower fees per sale and full control, but you lose Etsy's built-in traffic overnight. This makes sense when you already have your own audience — an email list, a social following, repeat customers who would follow you anywhere.

Dual presence means running both: Etsy for discovery, Shopify for your loyal customers and higher margins. Many successful sellers end up here permanently. You can even sync inventory and orders between the two with integration apps, so you manage everything from one dashboard.

Gradual migration means building the Shopify store while Etsy keeps paying the bills, then shifting emphasis over months. This is the lowest-risk path and the one most sellers should choose.

Do not close your Etsy shop in a fit of frustration on a Friday night. Build the new store first, then decide.

Step 1: Export your data from Etsy

Everything starts in your Etsy Shop Manager. Go to Settings, then Options, then Download Data. Etsy lets you export several CSV files:

Listings: your active listings, under "Currently for Sale." This is the big one.
Orders: your order history, which becomes your customer data.
Reviews: scroll down and select "Download Your Reviews."

Download all of them and keep copies somewhere safe. These files are your business's memory, and you want them whether the migration goes perfectly or not.

If your listings have variants — sizes, colors, finishes — note that Etsy's CSV structure differs from Shopify's. Shopify expects one row per variant combination. For a small catalog, you can fix this by hand in a spreadsheet. For a large one, a migration app will handle the mapping for you.

Step 2: Set up your Shopify store

If you have not already, sign up for Shopify and choose a plan. The Basic plan is where most migrating sellers start. Then:

Pick a theme. Shopify's theme store has free themes that look professional out of the box. Choose one built for your product type — a single-product theme for one hero item, a catalog theme for many SKUs.
Configure the basics: store name, currency, time zone, and contact information.
Set up payments. Shopify Payments is the default and avoids extra transaction fees. You can also add PayPal, which many Etsy buyers expect.
Set up shipping. Define your shipping zones, rates, and package dimensions. This is the step most sellers underestimate — Etsy's shipping labels and calculated rates spoiled you, and now you own the configuration.
Set up taxes. Shopify can calculate taxes automatically in many regions, but verify the settings for everywhere you sell.

None of this is hard. All of it is worth doing carefully, because mistakes here cost real money later.

Step 3: Import your listings

In your Shopify admin, go to Products and click Import. Upload the Etsy CSV you exported. Shopify will ask you to map fields — matching Etsy's columns to Shopify's — and then process the file. You will get a confirmation email when it is done.

Things to check after import, because they rarely transfer perfectly:

Images: product photos usually come across, but verify the order and quality. Re-upload anything that looks off.
Descriptions: Etsy's editor and Shopify's editor handle formatting differently. Read every description and fix broken formatting.
Variants: confirm that sizes, colors, and options imported as proper variants rather than a wall of text.
Prices and inventory: verify both. A wrong price on a live store is an expensive typo.
SEO fields: Etsy titles are optimized for Etsy's search, which rewards keyword stuffing. Shopify pages need titles and descriptions optimized for Google. Rewrite them.

This is also the moment to improve things. Your Etsy listings were written for a marketplace. Your Shopify pages should be written for your brand — your voice, your photography standards, your story.

Step 4: What does not transfer

This is the part that surprises people. Some things cannot come with you:

Your Etsy reviews do not import as Shopify reviews. You can display them manually — many sellers add a testimonials section quoting their best Etsy reviews, with attribution — but they will not appear as native review stars. Start collecting fresh reviews on Shopify from day one with a review app.
Your Etsy search ranking stays on Etsy. On Shopify, your traffic starts at zero. This is the real cost of migration, and it is why the "build first, then decide" approach matters.
Your Etsy followers do not transfer as an audience. But your customer emails do — which is why the order export matters so much.

What does transfer: your products, your prices, your customer list, your order history, and — most importantly — the knowledge of what sells.

Step 5: Tell your customers where you went

Your exported customer list is the most valuable thing you took from Etsy. Use it.

Email your past buyers announcing the new store. Offer a small incentive for their first Shopify order — a discount code costs you less than Etsy's fees on the same sale.
Update your Etsy shop announcement (if you keep the shop) pointing to your own site.
Redirect your social media links to the new store.
Set up an email capture on the Shopify store from day one, so you never again depend entirely on a platform for customer access.

One caution: check Etsy's policies on contacting buyers off-platform before you email anyone. You want to announce your store, not get your account flagged.

Step 6: Test everything before you announce

Place test orders. Go through checkout as a customer, with a real payment method, and refund yourself. Check that:

Shipping rates calculate correctly for different addresses
Taxes apply properly
Discount codes work
Confirmation and shipping emails look right
The store looks acceptable on a phone, because most of your traffic will be mobile

Then ask a friend to do the same and tell you everything confusing. You have looked at your own store too long to see it clearly.

Should you keep Etsy running?

For most sellers, yes — at least for a while. Etsy is a discovery engine. People search Etsy the way they search Google, with credit cards in hand, and that traffic is genuinely hard to replace. Many sellers run Etsy as the top of the funnel and Shopify as the home base: new customers find them on Etsy, repeat customers buy direct.

The math that decides this is simple. Compare Etsy's total fee load on your average order — listing fees, transaction fees, processing, and offsite ads — against Shopify's monthly subscription plus payment processing. There is a break-even revenue level, usually somewhere around $1,500 to $2,000 a month, above which Shopify is cheaper per sale. But "cheaper per sale" only matters if you have sales, and Etsy brings sales you would not otherwise get.

The migration is not really about leaving Etsy. It is about owning your customer relationships, your brand, and your margins — while letting Etsy do what it does best, which is putting your products in front of strangers. Build the store, import the listings, email your customers, and keep both doors open until the numbers tell you which one matters more.

The 30-day post-migration checklist

The migration is not over when the products are imported. Give the new store a month of attention before you judge it:

Week 1: Fix every product page. Rewrite titles for Google, not Etsy. Check images, variants, prices, and inventory counts. Place test orders and refund them.
Week 2: Set up email capture — a simple discount for new subscribers — and install a review app. Email your past Etsy customers about the new store with a first-order incentive.
Week 3: Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and start the slow work of SEO. Write one or two blog posts answering questions your customers actually ask; this is how independent stores get found.
Week 4: Look at the numbers. Where is traffic coming from? What is converting? Most new stores discover that product pages need clearer shipping information and that the checkout needs fewer surprises.

Do not expect the Shopify store to match Etsy revenue in month one. It will not. What you are building is an asset that compounds — an email list, search rankings, and a brand — while Etsy keeps paying the bills in the meantime. That is the whole point of the gradual path.

Your business was never really on Etsy. It was always in the products and the people who buy them. The store is just the address. Make sure you own it.