Move from WooCommerce to Crate
Stop maintaining a stack. Your products, customers and URLs come across, and the plugin updates, the backups and the security patches stop being your problem.
What you export: WooCommerce exports products as CSV from Products, then Export. Customers export through WordPress tools or a CSV export plugin.
How do I move from WooCommerce to Crate?
You move a WooCommerce store to Crate by exporting products and customers as CSV from WordPress and importing them into Crate. The structural difference to plan for is plugins: a self-hosted store keeps a surprising amount of its behaviour inside plugins rather than inside the store data, so list what each plugin does before you export and check /integrations for what Crate covers natively. Your domain is pointed at Crate rather than replaced, and your existing product and category URLs are redirected, which matters more here than anywhere else because a long-lived self-hosted store usually has the most accumulated inbound links. After the move there is no hosting to renew, no plugin to update and no backup to run.
What comes across
Field by field, from the export file named above.
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| Products | Name, description, short description, categories and tags. |
| Variations | Attributes, SKU, price, sale price and weight. |
| Stock | Stock status and quantity per variation. |
| Images | Featured image and gallery images. |
| Customers | Name, email, phone, billing and shipping addresses. |
| URLs | Product and category permalinks, as redirects. |
What does not come across
Read this band before the one above it. It is the half that decides whether the move goes well, and it is the half most migration pages leave out.
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Plugins and their data
This is the big one. A subscription plugin, a booking plugin or a custom-fields plugin holds data that is not in the product export. List every active plugin before you start.
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Theme and page templates
PHP templates do not transfer. You pick a Crate theme and set it up in the builder.
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Blog posts
Export them from WordPress and import them into Crate's pages and blog, which is a separate pass from the product import.
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Order history
Exportable as CSV for your records, not imported as live orders.
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Custom code in functions.php
Anything a developer added by hand needs to be identified and re-implemented, or dropped deliberately.
The order to do it in
The order matters more than the speed. The last step is deliberately last.
- List your active plugins Do this first. It is the step that decides whether the rest of the move is simple.
- Export products and customers Products, then Export. Then export customers.
- Import into Crate Products, then Import, with a column preview before anything is written.
- Check your variable products Variable products are where a Woo export most often loses a detail. Check ten of them by hand.
- Set up the theme Pick a theme and check the storefront at 360px.
- Connect payments and delivery See /integrations.
- Load the redirects Import your old permalinks. A long-lived self-hosted store has the most inbound links to lose.
- Point the domain and keep the old host for a month Do not cancel hosting the same day. Keep it until you are certain, then cancel.
Your existing links
Import your old permalinks and their new addresses and Crate serves them as permanent redirects. On a store that has been running for years this is worth more than everything else on this page put together.
Questions about moving from WooCommerce
Short answers, and none of them hedge. If yours is not here, ask us on the contact page.
Do I still need hosting?
No. Crate is hosted, so there is no server, no plugin update and no backup schedule to maintain.
What about my blog?
Export it from WordPress and import it separately. It is a second pass, not part of the product import.
What if a plugin does something Crate does not?
Find out before you move, not after. Contact us with the plugin name and we will tell you honestly whether Crate covers it.
Moving from somewhere else
Same structure, different export file.
Import the catalogue tonight.
Start the trial, import, and keep the old store running until you have taken one real order here.
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