Switching
Migrating from Shopify to TeraCart: what moves and what does not
Updated · Written by the TeraCart team
Moving from Shopify to TeraCart copies your products and variants, images, collections, customers, discount codes, pages, blog posts, the last 60 days of orders and redirects for your old links. It does not move your theme, apps, reviews, policies, gift cards, shipping and tax settings or your domain, and discount conditions such as a minimum spend are not carried across. You connect through a small read-only app that you create in Shopify, which takes about five minutes, and your Shopify store keeps running until you switch your domain.
What moves
| Item | What comes across | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Products and variants | Title, handle, description, status, vendor, type, tags, and each variant's price, compare-at price, SKU, barcode, stock and weight. | Stock is the single quantity Shopify reports, not stock per location. Option names such as Size or Colour are not stored, only their values. |
| Images | Each image is downloaded, converted to WebP and stored on TeraCart. | Images over 12 MB are skipped. Images inside page, blog and product descriptions stay linked to Shopify's servers. |
| Collections | Title, handle, image, published state and which products are in each. | Smart collections arrive as a snapshot of their products at import time. Their rules are not imported, so new products do not join them. |
| Customers | Name, email, phone, tags, addresses, order count, total spent and email marketing consent. | Passwords cannot move. Shoppers sign in with a one-time code or reset their password. |
| Orders | Original date, totals, tax, shipping, discount code, payment and fulfilment status, note and tags. | Shopify limits an app like this to the last 60 days. Each order gets the next TeraCart number and keeps its Shopify number as a reference, shown as Shopify #1042. An order with no imported products is skipped, and a mixed order loses the missing lines. |
| Discount codes | The code, percentage or fixed value, start and end dates, usage limit and how often it has been used. | Conditions are not carried. See the checks below. |
| Pages and blog posts | Title, body, handle, publish state, and for posts the author, tags, image and date. | Every Shopify blog merges into TeraCart's one blog. |
| Redirects | Your own Shopify redirects that point to a page on your store, plus blog post addresses. | Served as permanent redirects, for your own Shopify redirects and for blog posts. Product, collection and page addresses stay the same. See below. |
What does not move
- Your theme. Shopify themes only run on Shopify, so you pick a TeraCart theme and edit it in the visual editor. A separate upload can try an exported Shopify theme as an unpublished draft and report what does not work. Treat that as an experiment, not a copy.
- Apps. They stay behind. TeraCart builds in reviews, heatmaps, live chat, abandoned cart emails and GST invoices instead.
- Product reviews. They live in your review app. Export them as a CSV and upload the file in Reviews.
- Product SEO titles and descriptions. The Shopify connection does not copy them, although importing a products CSV does. Set them again on the products that matter most.
- Policies, gift cards and subscriptions. Paste your policies into TeraCart's Policies. Open gift card balances stay in Shopify, because TeraCart does not issue gift cards yet.
- Navigation menus, shipping zones and rates, tax settings, payment settings and staff accounts. Set these up again.
- Orders older than 60 days. They stay in Shopify unless you upload an orders CSV, which needs the care described below.
- Your domain. You connect it yourself, by changing DNS or by letting TeraCart connect it at supported registrars. A custom domain needs Plus or higher.
What to check after the import
- Read the summary. The summary screen lists what did not come over, with examples, and flags a product, customer or order count that is lower than Shopify's own.
- Review every discount code. Only the code, its value, dates and usage come across. Minimum spend, product or collection limits, customer rules, free-shipping and buy-X-get-Y rules do not, yet the code is still imported. One that depended on a condition can end up as a plain discount on everything, so fix or delete it before you open the store.
- Set your currency first. Prices are copied as plain numbers into your TeraCart store's currency, so check it matches Shopify's before you start.
- Open a few products with variants. Confirm the options read the way your shoppers expect.
- Upload the CSVs you need. Reviews, and customers if Shopify's Basic plan hid their names and emails from the app. For older orders, remove the last 60 days from the file first: the orders file matches on TeraCart's own order numbers, so a full export can duplicate the orders you already imported.
How the move works
TeraCart does not ship its own Shopify app. You make a small app in your own Shopify account and give TeraCart its credentials, so the access is yours to remove.
- In Shopify, open Settings, then Apps, then Develop apps, and build an app in the Dev Dashboard with the read-only scopes TeraCart lists, then install it on your store.
- Copy the app's Client ID and secret into the Move screen, under Settings, then Migrate to TeraCart. TeraCart reads your store with short-lived tokens and clears the secret when the import ends. You can delete the app afterwards.
- Start the import. Products, customers and orders come across together, and images are copied, so a large store takes a while.
- Read the summary, fix what it flags, choose a theme and connect your domain.
Plans, limits and running it twice
Moving is included on Plus and higher, and during the 14-day Pro trial every new store gets. Plus allows 500 products, and the import refuses to start if your catalogue would go over your plan's limit.
You can run the import again. It skips collections, customers, pages, posts and discount codes that already exist, and does not duplicate orders. It does overwrite a matching product's price, compare-at price, SKU, barcode, stock, weight and variants, and sets stock to zero on variants Shopify no longer has. It leaves the title, description, tags and handle alone, so run it again before you edit the fields it overwrites. Imported orders do not change stock or message shoppers.
Will your Google rankings survive?
Product, collection and page handles are kept the same, so those addresses do not change. Blog posts move to TeraCart's blog, with a permanent redirect from the old address. Redirects you set up in Shopify come across only when they point to a page on your own store, and a redirect to another domain is dropped. Shopify's /collections/name/products/name form is not served, so links written that way will not load. No importer can promise rankings, so check your best pages after the switch. See the built-in SEO guide for the rest.
Questions people ask
Does my Shopify store go offline when I move?
No. The import only reads your store, and Shopify keeps running until you point your domain at TeraCart. Until you open the TeraCart store, visitors to its address see a coming-soon page, so preview it from the editor and open it when you are ready.
Can I move orders older than 60 days?
Yes, from a file. Shopify limits the app to the last 60 days, so export your orders as a CSV from Shopify, delete the last 60 days from it, and upload the rest after the import. Without that step the file can duplicate orders you already imported. Customer files work the same way.
Do my customers keep their passwords?
No. Passwords cannot be copied between platforms. Customers sign in with a one-time code sent to their email or phone, or they reset their password.
Is moving to TeraCart free?
It is included on Plus and higher, and on the 14-day Pro trial that every new store starts with. The Free plan does not include the Shopify move.
Will my discount codes still work?
The codes and their values come across, but their conditions do not. A code with a minimum spend, a product limit or a free-shipping rule can end up as a plain discount on everything, so review each one before you open the store.
Do I need a developer to move?
No. The move is a form and a five-minute app setup in Shopify. A developer helps only if you rely on custom theme code or many apps, which do not transfer.