Running the Shopify Store Importer against an Etsy shop moves your product catalog, listing titles, descriptions, prices, tags, images and SKUs into Shopify admin. It does not move reviews, customer relationships, order history, draft listings or your Etsy search ranking. Those stay behind on Etsy and have to be rebuilt on the new store, not re-imported. Knowing which category a piece of your shop falls into, before you click import, is what keeps the migration from becoming a cleanup project.
What Shopify Store Importer Actually Moves From Etsy
Store Importer is Shopify’s own free app for pulling data in from another platform, and Etsy is one of its supported sources. Point it at your Etsy CSV export and it maps your active listings into Shopify products: title, description text, price, quantity, tags, materials, image URLs and SKU numbers where you set them.
That mapping is mechanical, not editorial, so a listing with a vague title on Etsy arrives with the same vague title on Shopify. Nothing about the import improves your copy for you.
Variants come across with two known limits worth checking before you rely on the tool for a catalog with real product options. According to Shopify’s Help Center, read at the time of writing (September 2026), Store Importer is currently listed as early access and available only on desktop devices for eligible stores, so confirm it actually appears in your own admin before you build a migration date around it.
The same page lists two hard limits: a product can have a maximum of three options during import, with anything beyond three left out entirely, and prices that vary by location aren’t supported, since the importer sets the product to its single highest listed price rather than preserving a location-based spread. If your Etsy pricing ever varied by shipping zone or currency, plan to reset it by hand afterward. (Last checked: September 18, 2026.)
What Does Not Survive the Import
The importer moves listings, not reputation. Reviews, star ratings and the customer relationships you built over years of Etsy sales don’t come with the product data, because Etsy doesn’t attach that history to the listing export and Shopify has nowhere native to put it. If trust signals matter to your new store’s first-time visitors, you’re rebuilding them from scratch rather than migrating them, and it’s worth reading how trust signals the marketplace supplied, and how to rebuild them actually get replaced before launch.
Order history and past customers also stay on Etsy. According to the Etsy Help Center, read at the time of writing (September 2026), the listing CSV you download for import only covers your active listings; sold order history is a separate download entirely, and Etsy has no export path that lands order or customer data inside a Shopify-compatible file.
(Last checked: September 18, 2026.) Draft listings sit outside the export too: Etsy’s own download only pulls active listings, so anything you have parked as a draft has to be published on Etsy first or copied over by hand.
The last thing that doesn’t survive is less visible but matters more over time: your Etsy search ranking. Etsy’s algorithm has no relationship to Google’s, and a listing that ranked well inside Etsy search carries zero ranking weight on a Shopify product page. That page starts at zero on Google the day it goes live, which is a separate and slower project from the import itself.
Quick Reference: What Transfers and What You Rebuild
| Store element | Comes through the import | What happens instead |
|---|---|---|
| Title, description, tags | Yes, exactly as written in the CSV | Copy quality is whatever it was on Etsy |
| Price, quantity, SKU | Yes, single price only | Location-based pricing collapses to the highest price |
| Images | Yes, files copied into Shopify | Confirm every image loaded before touching Etsy |
| Variants, up to 3 options | Yes | Anything past 3 options needs manual rebuilding |
| Reviews and star ratings | No | Rebuilt from zero through a Shopify review app |
| Order and customer history | No | Stays on Etsy as a separate download |
| Draft, unpublished listings | No | Publish on Etsy first, or copy the details by hand |
| Etsy search ranking | No | The Shopify page starts at zero on Google |
Preparing Your Etsy CSV Before You Run the Import
Etsy’s own CSV export, available from Shop Manager under Settings, then Options, then Download Data, includes title, description, price, currency, quantity, tags, materials, image URLs and SKU for your active listings.
For a shop with a thousand or more listings, Etsy’s own help documentation notes the export can take several minutes to generate, and the browser tab should stay open while it processes. Before uploading that file into Store Importer, open it in a spreadsheet and check three things.
First, look at how variants are laid out. Shopify expects one row per unique variant combination, sharing the same handle, so a listing with three sizes and four colors needs twelve rows once it’s formatted correctly. Etsy’s raw export doesn’t arrive in that shape, and a listing that looks fine in the CSV can still fail the three-option limit above if it was built with more attributes than Shopify’s importer will accept.
Second, check your descriptions for anything that depends on line breaks or bullet formatting. Etsy descriptions export as plain text, but Shopify’s description field renders HTML, so formatting that looked intentional on Etsy can collapse into a single unbroken paragraph on the other side.
This is the exact problem covered in rewriting marketplace listings as product pages, and it’s worth doing that pass before import rather than fixing dozens of listings after the fact.
Third, don’t close your Etsy shop before the images are confirmed on Shopify. The image URLs in Etsy’s export point to Etsy’s own servers, and Store Importer copies the actual files into Shopify during import, not just the links.
But if you shut the Etsy shop down first and the import needs a second pass, those source URLs may already be dead. Import fully, verify every image loaded, and only then decide what to do with the Etsy listing.
After the Import Lands
Once the products are in Shopify, the importer’s job is done and yours starts. A page that reads like an Etsy listing, short on structure, thin on the details a buyer needs without Etsy’s trust badges around it, won’t perform the way the same product did on the marketplace. It carries the same words, but not the same context a shopper trusted on Etsy.
Working through product pages that do not read like marketplace listings is the next step for the pages themselves, and it matters more than most sellers expect on the first migration.
It’s also worth deciding upfront how much of the move to run at once. A CSV import that lands two hundred products in an afternoon can outrun the rest of the store, an unfinished about page, no reviews yet, generic collection pages, before the storefront is ready for traffic.
A short pass through a migration readiness checklist before you run the import catches most of that gap in advance rather than after the first visitor lands on an empty-looking page.
Should You Run the Import Before or After Deciding to Leave Etsy
The import itself doesn’t require closing your Etsy shop, and there’s no reason to treat it as a one-way door. Many sellers run Store Importer to get Shopify populated and functional while Etsy sales continue, using the new store as a second channel rather than a replacement, at least until it’s proven out.
The import is reversible in the sense that nothing about running it changes what stays live on Etsy. What isn’t reversible is time: reviews and search ranking rebuild slowly, so the sooner the Shopify side exists in a usable state, the sooner that rebuilding clock starts.
Treating the import as a low-risk first step, rather than the final decision to leave, is usually the more accurate way to think about it.
FAQ
Does the Shopify Store Importer bring over Etsy reviews?
No. Reviews and star ratings stay on Etsy. Etsy’s listing export doesn’t include review data, and there’s no field in Shopify’s product structure to receive it, so this has to be rebuilt on the new store through your own review app or process.
Will my Etsy order history transfer to Shopify?
No. The CSV used for Store Importer only covers active listing data. Order and customer history are separate Etsy downloads and don’t map into Shopify products at all; they stay as historical records on the Etsy side.
What happens to product variants with more than three options?
Shopify’s importer supports a maximum of three options per product. Listings built with more than three won’t have the extra options imported, so those variants need to be simplified or added manually after the import.
Can I import draft listings from Etsy?
Not directly. Etsy’s data export only includes active listings, so a draft has to be published on Etsy first, or its details copied over by hand, before it can be part of the CSV that Store Importer reads.
Do I need to close my Etsy shop before running the import?
No, and it’s safer not to. Confirm every image and price landed correctly on Shopify first. Etsy’s image links point to Etsy’s own servers, and closing the shop early risks breaking a re-import if one is ever needed.