You have probably already decided you want off Etsy. The real questions are what survives the move, how long it takes, and whether your take-home actually improves. This guide answers all three, then shows you the one thing most migration articles skip: what happens to your profit per order after the switch.
Should you migrate Etsy to Shopify?
Migrate when you want a branded storefront you control, lower per-sale fees, and a customer list that is actually yours. Stay on Etsy — or keep both — if you rely entirely on Etsy's built-in search traffic and have no plan to drive your own.
That is the honest trade. Etsy hands you buyers; Shopify hands you a store. On Shopify nobody browses a marketplace and stumbles onto you, so you become responsible for ads, SEO, and email. In exchange you stop paying Etsy's marketplace tax on every order and you own the relationship.
Recent Etsy platform changes pushing sellers toward Shopify
A few recent policy shifts have accelerated the decision for many sellers. In June 2025, Etsy rewrote its Creativity Standards and removed the longstanding allowance for templated designs — listings now need to be based on your own original design; purchased templates and licensed patterns no longer qualify. A February 2026 algorithm update penalized US listings with domestic shipping prices above $6. And the US government's abolition of the $800 de minimis import exemption in August 2025 pushed raw material costs up sharply for sellers sourcing internationally. If any of these changes affect your shop directly, the migration calculus tips further toward Shopify.
If you are weighing the accounting side of the move — how sales, payouts, and fees line up across two platforms — our guide to dropshipping from Etsy to Shopify covers the multi-channel cost picture in detail.
What actually transfers (and what doesn't)
This is where sellers get surprised. Here is the clean split.
Products — yes, with cleanup
Etsy's CSV export includes title, description, price, currency code, quantity, tags, materials, image URLs, and SKU numbers (if you added any to your listings). The CSV carries product data cleanly, but images are served via CDN URLs and require separate download and re-upload — or a migration app that handles image transfers. Variants require manual column remapping before Shopify will accept them; a product with three sizes and three colors becomes nine rows in Shopify's format.
Standard Shopify products support up to three option types (Size, Color, Material) with up to 100 variants each. Shopify Plus removed the old 100-variant cap in late 2025 via Combined Listings, which now supports up to 2,048 variants per product with separate media and merchandising per child. If you are on a standard plan and have complex variant structures, plan for manual cleanup.
Customers and orders — no, not directly
Your Etsy order history and customer records do not transfer through the standard export. You can pull them in with a third-party migration app, but there is a catch that matters more than the mechanics: under Etsy's terms, you do not own your buyers' email addresses. So even a "successful" customer import gives you names and order totals, not a marketing list you can freely email.
The practical fix is to rebuild that list deliberately on Shopify from day one with signup incentives and post-purchase flows.
Reviews — no, and this one hurts
Etsy reviews are owned by Etsy and cannot be exported. You have to ask customers to re-review on Shopify, or use a third-party review app that imports from a CSV of past orders. Years of star ratings stay on Etsy's platform. Plan for rebuilding social proof from zero — treat it as a scheduled task, not an afterthought.
For the full mechanical sequence of moving catalog and history, the step-by-step Etsy-to-Shopify data guide goes deeper than the summary below.
How to migrate Etsy to Shopify, step by step
- Audit your Etsy catalog. Flag products you would happily discontinue and do not migrate them. The general rule: if a product has not sold in 18 months and is not a brand-defining hero, it probably does not deserve a slot in the new catalog.
- Export your data. In Etsy, go to Shop Manager → Settings → Options → Download Data → Download CSV. This exports your product listings including titles, descriptions, prices, quantities, tags, materials, and categories. Export orders separately from the Orders section.
- Set up your Shopify store. Pick a plan, choose a theme, and configure payments and shipping before you import anything. Keep mobile front of mind: check out on mobile thoroughly — a large share of buyers are on mobile.
- Import products. Shopify's free Store Migration app supports Etsy directly. For under 200 SKUs the app is the fastest path. For a large or messy catalog, a paid service such as LitExtension is often faster.
- Verify everything. Run a deduplication pass on product titles and SKUs. Validate every image URL still resolves. Standardise variant option names so "Size: Medium", "Medium", and "M" don't end up as three separate variants on Shopify.
- Rebuild customers and reviews. Import order history as a read-only record, then set up email capture and a review app to start collecting fresh social proof.
- Set 301 redirects and go live. If any Etsy product pages have Google backlinks or search rankings, set up 301 redirects in Shopify before delisting. Missing this is one of the harder things to recover from later. Connect your domain and place a test order end to end before you announce.
- Post-launch checklist. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console, set up GA4, install a review app, and connect your email platform.
What it costs and how long it takes
Time: a small shop of a few dozen clean listings is a weekend. A catalog in the hundreds with variant-heavy products is realistically one to two weeks once you include verification and rebuilding email capture.
Cost: the migration itself can be free if you do the CSV import yourself. Shopify's free Store Migration app supports Etsy natively, so for a tidy catalog you may pay nothing for the import. Done-for-you services scale with catalog size — check current pricing with vendors like LitExtension directly, as rates change. The bigger ongoing cost is your Shopify subscription plus the traffic you now have to generate yourself.
The profit math nobody shows you
Every other guide talks about "brand control." Almost none walk the fee math. Here it is.
Etsy takes a 6.5% transaction fee plus 3% + $0.25 payment processing plus a $0.20 listing fee on every sale. On a $50 order that totals approximately $5.10 in fees. Shopify with Shopify Payments takes only 2.4–2.9% + $0.30, totaling approximately $1.75.
Say you sell a $40 mug with free shipping. The per-order fee comparison using those same rates:
- Etsy: transaction 6.5% × $40 = $2.60, plus $0.20 listing fee, plus processing (3% × $40 + $0.25) = $1.45. Total ≈ $4.25 per order — and that is before Offsite Ads.
- Shopify Basic: processing 2.9% × $40 + $0.30 = $1.46 per order. No marketplace fee.
That is roughly $2.79 saved on a single $40 order — about 7% of the sale price back in your pocket. On 100 orders a month that compounds fast. But be honest about the offset: Shopify charges a flat monthly subscription that Etsy does not, so you need a minimum order volume just to clear that fixed cost before you are ahead.
The deeper catch: Shopify does not bring traffic. Etsy's offsite ads are expensive, but they are pulling buyers from Google Shopping and Meta that you would otherwise pay for yourself. On Etsy the traffic was baked into the fee. On Shopify you buy it — usually through Meta and Google Ads — and ad spend is now the line item that decides whether a $40 order is actually profitable. Which is exactly why your per-order math has to include ad cost, not just processing fees.
For print-on-demand sellers specifically, profit-per-order math also interacts with your AOV strategy. Our guide on increasing AOV with AI covers how to lift the average order value that makes your ad spend worthwhile, and the net profit margin benchmark gives you a realistic target to aim for once you are live on Shopify.
See true profit per order after the move
Here is the trap sellers fall into on Shopify: they check Shopify for revenue, Meta for ad results, and their bank for the payout — three numbers that never agree — and guess at profit. That guessing is where money quietly leaks.
PodVector exists to close that gap for print-on-demand sellers. It connects Shopify, Meta Ads, Google Ads, Printify, and Printful into a live data warehouse and computes your true per-order profit — product cost, processing fees, ad spend, and all. Victor, PodVector's AI employee, reads that live data, tells you which products and campaigns actually make money, and — with your approval — acts on the Shopify side: repricing products to a target margin, adjusting discounts, managing collections, and more. Victor does not touch your ad accounts; he reads the ad data and proposes moves, and you approve or reject each one. For a post-Etsy seller who just traded free marketplace traffic for paid traffic, knowing real profit per order is the difference between scaling and bleeding.
See also: CRO techniques for POD sellers — the conversion rate work that makes every traffic source pay off faster after your migration.
Should you keep Etsy as a channel too?
You do not have to burn the boat. Many sellers expand onto Shopify while keeping their Etsy shop active, using Etsy as a discovery channel while driving repeat customers to their Shopify store. Sync apps keep both storefronts stocked from one place.
The reason to consider it: Etsy's search traffic is genuinely valuable, and dropping it cold can cost you sales before your Shopify traffic ramps. Running both lets your Shopify ads and SEO grow while Etsy keeps feeding orders. Just watch the fees — every Etsy sale still carries its full marketplace take.
If you fulfill through Printify or Printful across both channels, our Gelato vs Printful vs Printify comparison can help you pick the right fulfillment stack for a multi-channel setup.
Watch your numbers after the move
However you split it, the migration is not "done" when products go live. The first month is when you learn whether your new traffic actually converts profitably and whether your fee savings survive contact with ad spend. Reconcile your Shopify sales against your payouts and your ad reports early and often.
Knowing your baseline matters: our average checkout completion rate benchmark shows what a healthy Shopify checkout conversion looks like, so you know whether your new store's funnel is competitive or needs work.
For POD sellers ready to use AI to systematically find their next profitable move, The POD Seller's Guide to AI for Ecommerce Brands is the natural next read after you are set up on Shopify.
FAQs
Can I move my Etsy reviews to Shopify?
No. Etsy reviews are owned by Etsy and cannot be exported. You have to ask customers to re-review on Shopify, or use a third-party review app that imports from a CSV of past orders. Treat rebuilding social proof as a planned task, not an afterthought.
Will I lose my customer email list when I migrate?
Effectively, yes. Etsy's terms mean you never owned your buyers' email addresses for marketing use, so there is no clean list to move. Import order history if you want the record, but plan to re-earn email consent on Shopify with signup incentives from day one.
How long does it take to migrate Etsy to Shopify?
A small, tidy catalog can be done in a weekend. A few hundred variant-heavy listings, plus verification and email rebuild, is realistically one to two weeks. Most of the time goes into cleanup and verification, not the import itself.
Is Shopify cheaper than Etsy?
Per order, usually. Etsy takes a 6.5% transaction fee plus 3% + $0.25 payment processing plus a $0.20 listing fee — on a $50 order that is approximately $5.10. Shopify with Shopify Payments takes only 2.4–2.9% + $0.30, totaling approximately $1.75. But Shopify adds a monthly subscription and you must fund your own traffic, so "cheaper" only holds once you clear those costs.
Can I sell on both Etsy and Shopify at the same time?
Yes, and many sellers do. With your own Shopify store, you own the customer relationship, build an email list, and control your brand experience — while keeping Etsy as a discovery channel and driving repeat customers to Shopify. Use a sync app to keep inventory aligned across both storefronts.
What does not transfer from Etsy to Shopify?
Reviews and order history do not move as live data. Order history imports as read-only records. Customer email addresses are not yours to market to under Etsy's terms, and favorites and shop stats stay on Etsy. Plan for all of these gaps before you go live.
How do I know if the migration actually improved my profit?
Track true per-order profit, not just revenue. After the move your costs shift from Etsy fees to a subscription plus ad spend, and only per-order profit — sale price minus product cost, processing, and ad cost — tells you whether the switch paid off. Reconcile Shopify sales against payouts and ad reports monthly so the answer is measured, not guessed. PodVector automates that reconciliation for print-on-demand sellers on Shopify.
Do I need to set up 301 redirects when I migrate?
If any Etsy product pages have Google backlinks or search rankings, setting up 301 redirects in Shopify before delisting is critical. Missing this is one of the harder things to recover from later. Shopify's native redirect manager accepts bulk CSV imports, making this manageable even for large catalogs.