If you've decided your WooCommerce store needs to move — for speed, for plugin sanity, for multi-region capability — the migration itself is the part most articles leave out. This is the playbook I follow on WooCommerce-to-Medusa migrations. It assumes you've already read why headless wins in 2026 → and decided to move.
The whole sequence takes 3–6 weeks for a typical sub-500-SKU store. The risks worth managing are SEO loss, customer data integrity, and ad attribution continuity. Each gets a dedicated step below.
What you keep, what you rebuild
Before starting, set expectations on what the migration carries over cleanly versus what gets rebuilt:
What you keep that you didn't expect
A few advantages owners discover post-migration:
- WooCommerce admin habits transfer. The new admin (Medusa Admin or Payload CMS) is different but learnable in a day.
- You stop being scared of updates. No more dreading the next WordPress version because three plugins might break.
- Page edits feel instant. Payload CMS publishes in under a second; WordPress was minutes with caching plugins.
FAQ
How long does the WooCommerce store need to stay live during migration? The old store keeps running until DNS cutover at the end of week 6. There's no overlap period where two stores compete — the 301 redirects from day one means there's only ever one active URL.
Will my product URLs change? By default, no. URL structure is preserved exactly. If you want to clean up legacy URL patterns, that's done explicitly via the 301 map.
What happens to my WooCommerce subscriptions? Subscriptions need to be re-implemented in Medusa. This is the single hardest plugin to migrate cleanly. Expect 2–4 days of additional engineering work and a clear customer communication plan for billing-cycle continuity.
Can my Shopify store be migrated the same way? Yes, the playbook is nearly identical with different data export specifics. Here's why Shopify migrations are often a higher priority →
Do I need to migrate my blog at the same time? No. WordPress can stay alongside as a sub-path (/blog) or sub-domain. Owners who prefer the WordPress authoring workflow can keep it exactly as-is.
Next steps
If you've read this far and you're thinking about timing, the right next step is a 24-hour fixed quote. Send a one-line brief → — your domain, your rough SKU count, your top concerns — and I'll come back with a migration plan and price. New builds without a migration involved start at /services/online-store from €2,000.