Etsy → to Shopify

Etsy to Shopify: build the brand store without giving up the marketplace

An Etsy to Shopify migration is different from every other move on this site, because Etsy is not a platform you leave. It is a marketplace you keep selling on while you build a store you actually own. This guide covers what can and cannot be exported from Etsy, the rules on customer data that catch sellers out, how to run both channels from one inventory, and what the project costs.

Why Etsy sellers open a Shopify store

• Fees. Etsy takes a listing fee, a transaction fee of 6.5 percent, payment processing, and up to 15 percent on Offsite Ads sales you did not opt into above a revenue threshold. On a Shopify store the same sale costs the payment rate and nothing else.
• The customer is Etsy’s, not yours. Etsy’s policies prohibit using buyer email addresses for marketing off the platform. Your repeat business lives in Etsy’s inbox.
• Search you do not control. One algorithm change or a wave of competitors in your category can halve your traffic overnight. A store on your own domain builds search equity you keep.
• Brand and pricing. No custom checkout, no bundles, no subscriptions, no wholesale, and a page that looks like every other shop.
• Risk. Account suspensions and payment reserves happen to good sellers. A second channel is insurance.

None of this means closing Etsy. Most of the sellers we work with keep it as a discovery channel and move repeat customers, wholesale and their best margins to Shopify.

What can be exported from Etsy

Data	Source on Etsy	Moves to Shopify?
Active listings with title, description, price, quantity, SKU, tags, materials, variations and image URLs	Shop Manager, Settings, Options, Download Data (CSV)	Yes. The listings CSV maps well to Shopify products. Variations with different prices and quantities export per combination. Digital listings export too, though the files themselves are handled separately.
Sold orders with buyer, items, totals and shipping	Shop Manager, Settings, Options, Download Data, Orders and Order Items CSVs	Yes, as order history for reporting. We import them so your Shopify reports include Etsy sales and each customer record shows what they bought.
Customer email addresses	Order exports	Yes as records, with a hard rule: Etsy buyers are not marketing subscribers. They are imported unsubscribed and only join your list if they opt in on your store.
Reviews	Etsy reviews are not exportable in a supported way	Not directly. Review apps such as Judge.me can import reviews from a CSV you compile, and some Etsy connector apps sync them. We treat this as optional and set expectations early.
Etsy URLs and search rankings	etsy.com	No. You cannot redirect etsy.com listings to your domain. Your Etsy rankings stay on Etsy. Your new store starts its own search history, which is why the SEO work on the Shopify side matters more here than on any other migration.
Shop policies, about page, FAQs	Manual	Rewritten for the store.

Tools: Shopify Marketplace Connect and the importer apps

Shopify’s own Marketplace Connect app links a Shopify store to Etsy, so that listings, inventory and orders sync between the two. For the initial import there are dedicated apps that pull listings and orders from Etsy, and Cart2Cart supports Etsy as a source. Which to use depends on what you are doing next:

• Keeping Etsy running (most sellers): import the catalog once, then connect Marketplace Connect so stock stays in step and Etsy orders flow into Shopify for fulfillment.
• Leaving Etsy: a one-time import of listings and order history, then the shop is set to vacation mode and eventually closed.

Either way we reconcile the import against the export counts, rebuild variations into a clean option structure, and clean the titles. Etsy titles are written for Etsy search and read badly as product names on a store, so we split them into a proper title and a tag set.

How we run an Etsy to Shopify project

1. Download the data. Listings, orders and order items. We also capture your shop sections, which become collections.
2. Build in a free Shopify development store. Theme, checkout, payments, shipping and taxes. As a Shopify Plus Partner we build in a development store, so you pay Shopify nothing until launch.
3. Catalog import. Listings become products with variants, images and tags. Titles and descriptions are cleaned for a store rather than a marketplace.
4. Order history. Imported silently as Shopify orders with the Etsy order numbers, so reporting and customer records are complete from day one.
5. Customers. Imported as unsubscribed records with their purchase history. A welcome offer on the store invites them to opt in.
6. Channel sync. Marketplace Connect configured so inventory and orders stay aligned if you keep Etsy.
7. SEO foundation. Collection structure, product copy, structured data, sitemap, Search Console and Merchant Center, because this store has to earn its own rankings.
8. Launch and audit report.

Timeline and cost

An Etsy store with under 500 listings is typically live on Shopify in four to six weeks, faster than most migrations because there is no theme to reverse-engineer and no redirect map to build. Projects start at $2,500 for shops under 500 listings and $3,500 for larger shops, including the catalog and order import, the store build and the channel sync, quoted as a fixed price. Larger shops, custom design or wholesale setup are scoped individually. Payment is 50 percent to begin and 50 percent once the store is live and you are fully satisfied with the figures.

Running both channels well

The sellers who do best treat Etsy as the top of the funnel. Packaging inserts and thank-you cards point buyers to the store, usually with a first-order discount. Product ranges diverge over time: limited runs and bundles on the store, evergreen items on Etsy. Marketplace Connect keeps stock honest so you never oversell across the two. Wholesale, if you have it, moves entirely to Shopify B2B.

Cleaning Etsy listings for a store

Etsy listings are written for Etsy’s search engine, and they show it. A title like Personalized Leather Wallet Gift for Him Anniversary Gift Boyfriend Husband is a strong Etsy listing and a bad product name. The catalog import is the moment to fix this, and we do it in a structured way rather than by hand.

• Titles. The product gets a short name (Personalized Leather Wallet). The rest of the Etsy title becomes tags and, where it describes a real attribute, a metafield the theme can display.
• Variations. Etsy allows two variations with per-combination price and quantity. These map to Shopify options and variants directly. Where you used a variation as a workaround, for example a Style variation that is really three different products, we split them.
• Personalization. Etsy’s personalization field becomes a line item property on the product page, with the same character limit and instructions, so the order shows the buyer’s text exactly as before.
• Digital listings. The files are downloaded from Etsy and attached to the Shopify products through the Digital Downloads app so delivery is automatic.
• Sections. Etsy shop sections become collections, and we usually add a few more, because a store can have a navigation that a shop cannot.
• Photos. Etsy photos are exported at full size. Products with fewer than three images are flagged, because a store page with one photo converts badly.

The margin case, worked

Take a $60 sale. On Etsy the listing fee, the transaction fee on the item and shipping, payment processing and, if the buyer arrived through Offsite Ads, the advertising fee together take somewhere between 12 and 27 percent depending on how the sale came in. On a Shopify store the same sale costs the payment processing rate, roughly 3 percent, plus the store subscription spread across all sales. For a shop doing $8,000 a month, the difference is typically $700 to $1,500 a month after the subscription, which pays for the migration inside a quarter. Where it becomes a real business rather than a saving is repeat purchases: on Etsy the second sale costs the same as the first, and on your store it costs nothing to reach the customer who already opted in.

Common mistakes Etsy sellers make

• Closing the Etsy shop on launch day. The store has no rankings yet; Etsy still has the traffic. Run both and let the balance shift.
• Uploading the Etsy buyer list to an email tool. It breaches Etsy’s terms and it is the fastest way to get the shop suspended.
• Copying listings unchanged. Duplicate text across Etsy and the store is fine, but Etsy-style titles on a store are not.
• Skipping the SEO foundation because it was never needed on Etsy. The store starts from zero and needs collection structure, product copy and Search Console from day one.
• Pricing the store lower than Etsy to attract buyers. Price the same, and use the store for bundles, subscriptions and wholesale that Etsy cannot do.

Shipping and sales tax change more than you expect

Two things Etsy quietly handled for you become your responsibility on a store, and both need setting up before the first order rather than after.

Shipping. Etsy shipping profiles with per-item and additional-item rates map to Shopify shipping profiles, and calculated shipping through Etsy’s USPS labels becomes either flat rates you set or carrier-calculated rates through Shopify Shipping, which prints USPS, UPS and DHL labels at discounted rates from the order screen. Etsy’s free shipping guarantee threshold becomes a free-shipping rate with a minimum order value. International sellers use Shopify Markets to show duties and local currency, which Etsy handled behind the scenes.

Sales tax. Etsy is a marketplace facilitator, so it collected and remitted sales tax for you in every US state that requires it. Your own store does not have that arrangement. Shopify Tax calculates the right rate at checkout and tells you when you cross a state’s economic nexus threshold, but registering and filing in the states where you have nexus is now yours to do, or your accountant’s. Sellers who miss this find out at their first filing deadline. We flag it in the audit and set up Shopify Tax with your home state registration on day one. Outside the US, VAT and GST work the same way: the store collects, you remit.

What you get at handover

The project closes with the catalog cleanup report showing every listing’s old and new title and how its variations were mapped, the reconciliation ledger for listings, orders and customers, the Marketplace Connect configuration documented so you can see what syncs in which direction, the tax setup with your registrations recorded, and a recorded walkthrough of the Shopify admin. Sellers moving from Etsy usually have not run an independent store before, so the walkthrough is longer than usual and covers orders, shipping labels, discounts and the basics of Shopify Email.

Frequently asked questions

Tell us about the shop on the migration survey. If you are also weighing a proper theme build, our migration services page explains what a store build with us includes.