You're running an e-shop on Shoptet, Upgates, Shopify, or another hosted platform, and you're thinking about switching to your own solution. The main question is: will I lose anything? Products, customers, search engine rankings? Short answer: you don't have to. But migration requires preparation and the right approach. This article explains what can be transferred, what can't, and where people most commonly make mistakes.
When migration makes sense
Not every reason for dissatisfaction is a reason to migrate. If you don't like the button color or you're missing one feature, address it within your current platform. Migration makes sense in a few specific situations.
The first is economics. If you're paying $60–$140 per month and you know you'll be running the e-shop for another five years, we're talking about $3,600–$8,400. For a fraction of that amount, you can have your own e-shop that belongs to you with no monthly fees.
The second situation is platform limitations. You want to integrate your own warehouse management system, but the platform doesn't allow it. You need a specific checkout flow, but you can't change it. The design looks like every other e-shop on the same platform. These are legitimate reasons to leave.
The third situation is dependency. The platform changes its terms, raises prices, or removes a feature you rely on — and you can't do anything about it because the data and the e-shop don't belong to you. Your own solution eliminates this dependency.
What transfers
Products are the foundation of any migration and transfer completely. Name, description, price, variants (sizes, colors), stock levels, weight, EAN codes — everything you have in your admin panel can be exported and imported into the new system. Most platforms allow export to CSV or XML, which are standard formats for data transfer.
Categories and their structure transfer including nesting. If you have categories Clothing → Women → Dresses, they'll look the same in the new e-shop.
Product images are downloaded from the original e-shop and uploaded to the new one. An important detail here: do this systematically, not manually. With hundreds of products, manual downloading would take days. An automated script handles it in minutes.
SEO data — meta titles, meta descriptions, and URLs — transfer, but require special attention. More on that in the SEO section below.
What doesn't transfer
Design. The new e-shop will have its own design and template. But this is more of an advantage than a disadvantage — you're probably switching platforms precisely because the current design doesn't suit you. With your own e-shop and an AI assistant, you can customize the design exactly to your liking.
Order history from the old system typically doesn't transfer to the new one. Old orders remain in the original platform's admin panel, which you'll have access to for some time after migration. The new e-shop starts with a clean history. For accounting and returns, download an export of all orders before you cancel the original platform.
Customer accounts don't transfer because passwords are encrypted and can't be exported. Customers will create new accounts in the new e-shop, usually automatically with their first order. In practice, this isn't a problem because most e-shop customers purchase without registering.
SEO: redirects are crucial
This is the area where the most mistakes are made, and the consequences are painful. If your old platform has the URL your-shop.com/red-long-dresses and in the new e-shop the same product is at your-shop.com/clothing/red-long-dresses, Google treats these as two different pages. The old one disappears from the index, and the new one starts from zero. Years of built-up rankings — gone.
The solution is simple: 301 redirects. For every old URL, you set up a permanent redirect to the new address. Google understands that the content has moved and transfers the ranking to the new URL. Redirects are configured in the server configuration or directly in the application — for a Next.js e-shop, it's the next.config.js file with an array of redirects.
The number of redirects depends on the size of your e-shop. Have 50 products? You can do it manually in an hour. Have 5,000 products? You need an automated script that generates redirects from an export of old and new URLs. At StartEshop.cz migration, generating redirects is part of the process.
Besides product URLs, don't forget about categories, static pages (terms and conditions, contact, about us), and the sitemap. Submit a new sitemap to Google Search Console right after migration so Google knows the site structure has changed.
How migration works step by step
The first step is exporting data from the original platform. Download products, categories, images, and the list of URL addresses. On Shoptet, this is done through the admin panel in CSV format. On WooCommerce, through the built-in export or a plugin. On Shopify, through its admin export or API. On Upgates, through the API or CSV export.
The second step is preparing the data for the new system. Formats differ — Shoptet exports data differently than WooCommerce, differently than Shopify or Upgates. The data needs to be transformed into the format the new e-shop expects. For simple e-shops, you can do this in Excel; for larger ones, automated conversion is better.
The third step is importing into the new e-shop and checking. Upload the products, verify that prices are correct, variants work, images display, and categories match. This is the phase where being thorough pays off — fixing an error on one product is easy, fixing it on five hundred products is tedious.
The fourth step is setting up redirects and launching. Deploy the new e-shop, activate the redirects, and submit the new sitemap to Search Console. You can keep the old e-shop running in parallel for a few days for safety.
Most common mistakes
Forgotten redirects. I mentioned this above, but it's worth repeating — it's mistake number one. Every old URL that has a link from Google, social media, or another website must have a redirect. Otherwise, the visitor lands on a 404 page and leaves.
Rushing. Migration can be done in a day, but shouldn't be done under stress. Schedule it during a lower-traffic period. If you have a seasonal e-shop, don't migrate during peak season.
Canceling the old account too early. After migration, keep access to the original platform for at least 3 months. You'll need the order history for accounting, returns, and to verify you haven't overlooked anything.
Ignoring analytics. Before migration, note your key metrics: traffic, conversion rate, most-visited pages. After migration, compare them. If traffic drops significantly, you're probably missing redirects on important pages.
Is it worth it?
Migration costs time and energy. But if you're paying hundreds of dollars monthly for a platform that limits you, it's an investment that pays for itself. Your own e-shop means zero monthly fees, full control over design and features, and independence from any provider. You do it once, and then the platform you're on is yours.