Etsy to Shopify migration: what actually happens, and what it costs.
No hype, no vague promises. Here's what transfers, what breaks if you skip the SEO step, and what it actually costs to have someone handle it.
If you're reading this, you've probably already decided Etsy isn't going to be your only home much longer. Maybe it's the fees eating into every sale. Maybe you want your own brand instead of a listing next to twenty competitors. Maybe you're tired of not really knowing who your customers are. Whatever got you here, the question isn't really "should I move," it's "how bad is this going to be, and what does it actually cost." Here's the honest answer.
Why sellers actually leave Etsy
Not the abstract "own your brand" pitch, the specific things that push a seller from thinking about it to doing it:
- Etsy's transaction, listing, and payment fees compound on every sale, and they don't go down as you grow
- You don't own your customer list. Etsy limits what you can do with buyer data and how you contact past customers
- Your shop sits next to direct competitors in Etsy's own search results, by design
- You can't build the kind of email flows, loyalty programs, or checkout experience that turns one-time buyers into repeat ones
None of that means Etsy was a bad place to start. It's a genuinely good place to prove a product works with zero upfront cost. It's just not built to be where a real, growing brand lives long-term.
What actually transfers, and what doesn't
This is the part most sellers get wrong, because Etsy and Shopify don't structure data the same way. A straight CSV export and import is not a migration, it's a data dump that usually needs real cleanup before it's usable.
The part most sellers get wrong: SEO doesn't just "carry over"
Here's the part that surprises people: you can't redirect an Etsy listing to your new site. Etsy owns that URL, not you, and Etsy only allows a clickable outbound link in one place, a seller's About page, specifically to stop sellers routing buyers off-platform.1 So if a listing ranks well in Google, that ranking mostly stays with Etsy. It doesn't move with you the way it would if you were migrating between two sites you actually control.
What that means in practice: your new Shopify store starts its own SEO close to zero. That's the real reason a rushed, no-plan migration can cost a seller real traffic and real revenue in the months right after the move, not a technical mistake that a redirect would have fixed, but a gap in traffic that has to be rebuilt deliberately on the new domain.
There's one place redirect-mapping genuinely does apply: if you also have, or had, a separate website of your own, an old WordPress or Squarespace site being replaced, for example, redirecting every one of those pages to its new Shopify equivalent is straightforward and does protect that traffic, because you control both domains. It's just not the same thing as your Etsy listings, and no agency can promise otherwise.
What we actually do
We're not a plugin or a self-serve migration tool. We're a small team that does this by hand: your best products get moved and organized properly, not dumped and hoped-for; if you have an existing website being replaced, every page gets mapped to its new equivalent with a real redirect; and for the Etsy side specifically, we build a real plan instead of a false promise, proper technical SEO setup on the new store from day one, and a sensible transition timeline instead of cutting over blind.
Starting at $1,600 for a straightforward catalog. See full pricing →
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does an Etsy to Shopify migration take?
Depends on catalog size and how clean your current listings are, but most straightforward stores are live on Shopify within two to three weeks.
Will I lose my Etsy reviews?
There's no clean, automatic way to move Etsy reviews to Shopify. We'll talk through the realistic options for your specific store rather than promise something that isn't there.
Do I have to close my Etsy shop?
No. Plenty of sellers run both for a while, using Etsy for marketplace traffic and Shopify as their owned, branded store, and shift fully over time.
Will my Google rankings survive the move?
Not automatically, and not the way most people assume. Etsy doesn't allow listings to redirect to an outside site, so a listing's own ranking mostly stays with Etsy once you leave, that's true no matter how carefully the migration is handled. What does carry over cleanly is any separate website of your own being replaced, if you have one, since you control both domains there. For the new Shopify store itself, the honest plan is proper SEO setup from day one and rebuilding rankings deliberately, not a promise that old traffic will simply follow you.