How to Move from Etsy to Shopify: A Step-by-Step Migration Guide

Step-by-step guide to move from Etsy to Shopify - export your listings CSV, import products, move customers legally, and keep your Etsy shop selling.

Updated 2026-07-02

Moving from Etsy to Shopify is mechanically simple—Etsy gives you a CSV, Shopify has an official import path—but most sellers get the strategy wrong, not the mechanics. They close their Etsy shop on day one, lose the marketplace traffic that was paying their bills, and spend six months rebuilding an audience from zero. This guide walks through the actual migration steps, verified against Etsy's and Shopify's current documentation, and explains why "migrate" should usually mean "add Shopify, keep Etsy" rather than burning the bridge.

Decide First: Full Migration or Run Both?

Before touching a CSV, be honest about why you're moving. If it's fee frustration, do the math first: Etsy charges $0.20 per listing plus a 6.5% transaction fee on the order total (including shipping), plus payment processing that varies by country. Shopify replaces those with a monthly subscription plus its own payment processing. Depending on your volume and average order value, the switch may save less than you think—we break down the full comparison in our Etsy fee guide and the broader Etsy vs Shopify decision.

The bigger issue is traffic. Etsy is a marketplace: buyers arrive because they searched Etsy, not because they know your brand. Shopify is infrastructure: nobody visits your new store until you send them there. That's why the recommended path for most sellers is:

1. Keep the Etsy shop open and let it keep generating orders and cash flow.
2. Launch Shopify in parallel and treat it as your long-term home—email list, brand domain, repeat buyers.
3. Shift marketing spend and new-product launches to Shopify over 6–12 months, and only wind Etsy down if it stops earning its fees.

Sellers who run Etsy and Shopify together get the best of both: marketplace discovery plus an owned channel Etsy can't suspend. And if your Etsy shop has ever been at risk of suspension, that alone is reason to have Shopify running before you need it—see our post on Etsy account suspension risks.

Step 1: Export Your Data from Etsy

Etsy provides CSV exports natively—no apps required. All of it lives in the same place:

Export your active listings. Sign in to Etsy, go to Shop Manager → Settings → Options → Download Data, then under "Currently for Sale Listings" click Download CSV. You'll get a file named EtsyListingsDownload.csv containing the title, description, price, currency, quantity, tags, materials, and image URLs for every active listing.

Two catches to know about:

• Only active listings export. Drafts, expired, and deactivated listings are not included. If you want inactive products in the export, temporarily renew them first, download the CSV, then deactivate them again.
• Variations export flat. Etsy's CSV puts variation data in VARIATION columns rather than one row per variant, which matters for the import step below.

Export your order history. From the same Download Data page you can download spreadsheets of your sold orders and order items by month or year. Do this even if you don't plan to import orders into Shopify—it's your sales history for bookkeeping and taxes.

Download your full account data. Etsy also lets you request a ZIP of your shop data in CSV and JSON formats (covered in Etsy's "How Do I Download My Etsy Data?" help article). This is the belt-and-suspenders backup: reviews, shop information, and more. Grab it once before you change anything.

Save your images at full resolution separately. The CSV contains image URLs, and import tools will pull from them, but URLs can break if you later deactivate listings. If your originals aren't already organized on disk, download them now.

Step 2: Import Your Products into Shopify

Shopify has an official migration path documented in its Help Center ("Migrate from Etsy"), and as of 2026 there are two realistic routes:

Route A: Shopify's first-party Store Migration app. Shopify's own Store Migration app imports products from your Etsy CSV directly into the Shopify admin—install the app, upload EtsyListingsDownload.csv, and it maps the fields for you. Note that it's in early access and not yet available to every store, and it has documented limits: products are capped at three options, and if you used Etsy's prices-by-location feature, the import sets each product to its highest price. Review every imported price before publishing.

Route B: Edit the CSV and use Shopify's standard product import. If the Store Migration app isn't available on your store, restructure the Etsy CSV to Shopify's product CSV format: one row per unique variant combination, with Option1 Name / Option1 Value columns mapped from Etsy's VARIATION fields, and an optional Variant Image column for variant-specific photos. It's tedious for large catalogs, but it gives you full control—and it's a good moment to clean up titles and descriptions that were written for Etsy search rather than Google.

Customers, orders, and reviews need third-party apps. Shopify's own guide is explicit that the CSV route covers products only; for historical orders, customer records, and reviews it points to App Store apps (Shuttle and ShopList for customers/orders, Shuttle or Reputon for Etsy reviews). Reviews are worth the effort—social proof is the single hardest asset to rebuild on a fresh domain.

Whichever route you take, do a sample check after import: 10–20 products, verifying variants, prices, inventory quantities, and image order. Bulk-fixing 400 broken listings after launch is far more painful than catching the mapping error on product #3.

Step 3: Rebuild What the CSV Can't Carry

A product CSV is maybe half the store. Budget time for the rest:

• Shipping profiles. Etsy shipping settings don't transfer. Rebuild your rates and zones in Shopify's shipping settings.
• Policies and legal pages. Returns, exchanges, privacy policy—rewrite them for your own store, since Etsy's marketplace-wide buyer protections no longer apply.
• Payments and payouts. Set up Shopify Payments or a third-party gateway; if you're selling internationally, confirm which gateways support your country before launch day.
• Taxes. Etsy collected and remitted marketplace sales tax in many jurisdictions on your behalf. On Shopify, tax settings are your responsibility—talk to an accountant if you're unsure.
• Theme and navigation. Your Etsy shop's look doesn't export. Pick a theme, build collections from your Etsy sections, and write a homepage that explains the brand to a first-time visitor who's never seen your Etsy reviews.

Step 4: Move Your Customers Without Breaking Etsy's Rules

This is where sellers get themselves suspended, so read carefully. Two Etsy policies constrain you:

You can't divert buyers off Etsy to purchase. Etsy's Off-Platform Transactions policy prohibits using Etsy to direct shoppers to another venue to buy the same items—that's treated as fee avoidance. You also can't complete a transaction that started on Etsy somewhere else. Links to your website are allowed in your shop, but per Etsy's own guidance they're only clickable on your About page—and even there, the link should present your brand, not say "buy the same thing cheaper here."

You can't email past Etsy buyers marketing without consent. Etsy's Seller Policy says buyer information you receive through a transaction may only be used for that transaction or Etsy-related communication—not unsolicited commercial messages. Sending "we've moved to ournewstore.com!" blasts to your Etsy buyer list violates the policy (and, in many countries, email marketing law). You need express consent—e.g., a buyer explicitly opting in.

What you can do, safely:

• Put your website on your Etsy About page and in your social profiles.
• Build the email list on your own channels: Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, your packaging brand—audiences you own point wherever you want.
• Offer an opt-in, not a redirect: a discount code for joining your newsletter (hosted on your Shopify domain) is an invitation; "don't buy here, buy there" is fee avoidance.
• Let repeat buyers find you. Consistent brand name, logo, and product photography across Etsy and Shopify means customers who Google you land on your store.

Step 5: Keep Etsy Alive During the Transition

Don't close the shop, and don't reach for vacation mode as a migration tool—Etsy's vacation mode hides all your listings from search, which means your shop stops earning and loses momentum while you fiddle with your Shopify theme. Instead:

• Keep Etsy listings active and fulfill normally. Cash flow funds the migration.
• Set up inventory sync early. Selling the same stock in two places without sync guarantees an oversell. Note that Shopify's Marketplace Connect app no longer accepts new Etsy connections (existing connections still work), so new setups should use a dedicated Etsy integration app from the Shopify App Store—we compare the options in our guide to syncing Etsy and Shopify orders and inventory.
• Decide per-product, not all-or-nothing. Many sellers keep bestsellers on both channels and launch new lines Shopify-first, where margins are better.
• Review the wind-down only after 6–12 months of data. If Etsy still drives meaningful profitable orders, keep paying the fees. If it's dwindled to noise, then close or vacation-mode it.

What to Expect for SEO and Traffic

Set expectations low and horizons long:

• Nothing redirects. Etsy gives you no way to 301-redirect your shop or listing URLs to your new domain. Any Google rankings your Etsy listings earned stay with etsy.com, not with you.
• Your new domain starts from zero. A fresh Shopify store has no backlinks and no search history. Organic Google traffic typically takes months to build, which is exactly why you keep Etsy's marketplace traffic flowing in the meantime.
• Etsy search and Google SEO are different games. Etsy tags and titles were written for Etsy's engine; rewrite key product pages for Google intent, build collection pages around real search terms, and follow the fundamentals in our Shopify SEO basics guide.
• Owned channels compound. The email list, the repeat-customer base, the Pinterest boards pointing at your domain—these are the assets that make Shopify worth it. They grow slowly and never get suspended.

One operational note as you scale: sellers who succeed on Shopify often don't stop at one store—a second niche brand, a regional storefront, a wholesale channel. If you get there, running each store from its own browser tab breaks down fast; a consolidated dashboard like StoreFleet gives you orders, revenue, and shipping across every Shopify store in one place, which keeps a growing portfolio manageable with a small team.

Migration Checklist

The sellers who migrate well treat it as an expansion, not an exit. Export cleanly, import carefully, respect Etsy's off-platform rules, and let the marketplace keep paying you while your own store finds its feet.

Sources

• How to Download Your Listing Information – Etsy Help
• How to Download a Spreadsheet of Your Sold Transactions – Etsy Help
• How Do I Download My Etsy Data? – Etsy Help
• Migrate from Etsy – Shopify Help Center
• Shopify Marketplace Connect app – Shopify Help Center
• Etsy Fee Basics – Etsy Help
• Off-Platform Transactions Policy – Etsy
• Seller Policy – Etsy
• How to Turn On Vacation Mode – Etsy Help