Teachable to Shopify Migration - Step-by-Step Guide & Expert Services

Seamlessly Transition Your Online Courses: Teachable to Shopify Migration Guide

As an online course creator, you've likely started your journey on a specialized platform like Teachable. However, as your business grows and your offerings diversify, you might find yourself needing a more robust and flexible e-commerce solution. Migrating from Teachable to Shopify allows you to combine your educational content with a full-fledged online store, offering a unified user experience and expanding your sales capabilities.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of replatforming your Teachable store to Shopify. Due to Teachable's platform architecture, the most effective method for this data transfer involves exporting your course, student, and order data into CSV files, and then importing them into Shopify. While this requires a hands-on approach to data extraction, tools like Cart2Cart can streamline the subsequent import process, making your transition as smooth as possible. Let's dive in.

Prerequisites for Migration

Before initiating your migration from Teachable to Shopify, a thorough preparation phase is crucial to ensure data integrity and minimize downtime. Here's what you'll need to do:

• Set up Your Shopify Store: Create a new Shopify account and complete the initial setup. This includes choosing a plan, selecting a theme, and configuring basic store settings. While you don't need to populate it with products yet, having the basic structure in place will facilitate the migration. Read our guide on How to prepare Target store for migration? for more details.
• Export Data from Teachable: This is the most critical step for your source platform. Teachable doesn't offer a direct API for third-party migration tools to pull data automatically. You'll need to manually export your courses (products), students (customers), enrollments (orders), and other relevant data as CSV files. Ensure you capture all essential information like course descriptions, pricing, student details, and order history. Focus on exporting:
  • Course/Product Data (titles, descriptions, prices, images if downloadable)
  • Student/Customer Data (names, emails)
  • Order/Enrollment Data (order IDs, student details, course purchased, purchase date, amount)
  • If applicable, any blog posts or static pages.

  Thoroughly organize these CSV files, ensuring they are clean and well-structured, as this will significantly impact the import process. Consult our general tips for How to prepare Source store for migration?

• Install the Cart2Cart Shopify App: For a seamless data import into Shopify, the Cart2Cart Store Migration App is required. Install this app from the Shopify App Store on your target Shopify store.

Performing the Migration: A Step-by-Step Guide

With your Teachable data exported and your Shopify store prepped, you're ready to use the Cart2Cart migration wizard. Here’s a detailed walkthrough:

Step 1: Start Your Migration

Begin by accessing the Cart2Cart migration wizard. This is your starting point for orchestrating the entire data transfer process.

Step 2: Set Up Your Source Store (Teachable via CSV)

Since Teachable does not have a direct API integration for automated migrations with Cart2Cart, you will use the CSV file import method. Select “CSV File to Cart” as your source cart type.

You will then be prompted to upload the CSV files you exported from your Teachable store. Carefully upload all your prepared CSV files containing product data (your courses), customer data (your students), and order data (enrollments and purchases).

Step 3: Set Up Your Target Store (Shopify)

Now, it's time to connect your new Shopify store. Select “Shopify” from the dropdown list of target carts.

The recommended connection method is to “Install App from Marketplace.” Click the provided link to navigate to the Shopify App Store, install the Cart2Cart Store Migration App, and follow the on-screen instructions. Once installed, return to the Cart2Cart wizard, and the connection should be established automatically.

Alternatively, you can choose to “Provide API Access Credentials.” This involves generating an Admin API access token within your Shopify admin. However, installing the app is generally simpler and more secure. You can find more information about securely providing access details in our FAQ.

Step 4: Select Data Entities for Migration

In this step, you'll choose precisely which data entities you want to transfer from your Teachable CSVs to Shopify. Based on the data exported from Teachable, you can select items such as:

• Products: This will be your courses. You can migrate course titles, descriptions, pricing, and images (if linked or embedded in CSV).
• Customers: Your student data, including names and email addresses.
• Orders: Enrollment and purchase history from Teachable.
• Products Categories: If you've organized courses into categories.
• Products Reviews: If you have collected reviews on Teachable (note: reviews on Shopify typically require the AirReviews app, as mentioned in Shopify's limitations).
• CMS Pages: Any static pages you want to transfer.
• Blogs, Blogs Posts: If you maintained a blog on Teachable.

You can choose to migrate all available entities or select specific ones based on your needs.

Step 5: Configure Additional Options & Data Mapping

This stage allows you to fine-tune your migration. You'll find a range of Additional Options to optimize the transfer:

• Clear current data on Target store before migration: This option is useful if you have placeholder data on your Shopify store and want a clean slate. Learn more about clearing target store data.
• Preserve Order IDs: Maintain your existing order numbers from Teachable in Shopify. Find out how preserving IDs works.
• SEO URLs / Create 301 SEO URLs: Crucial for maintaining your search engine rankings and link equity. This option ensures that old Teachable URLs redirect to their new Shopify counterparts, preventing broken links and preserving your SEO value.
• Migrate Images in Description: Ensure any images embedded within your course descriptions are transferred.
• Migrate All Categories: To maintain your course organization.
• Migrate Groups to Tags: An option to convert student groups into Shopify tags for easier management.

Next, you'll proceed to Data Mapping. This is where you match specific fields and statuses from your Teachable CSV data to their equivalents in Shopify. For example, you might map 'Enrolled' status to 'Paid' or 'Fulfilled' in Shopify, and 'Student' roles to 'Customer' groups. This ensures consistency and proper functionality post-migration.

Step 6: Run Demo Migration & Full Migration

Before committing to the full transfer, we highly recommend performing a Demo Migration. This allows you to transfer a limited number of entities (e.g., 10-20 products, customers, and orders) for free. You can then review the migrated data on your Shopify store to ensure everything looks correct and functions as expected. This step is vital for identifying and rectifying any potential issues.

Once you're satisfied with the demo results, you can proceed with the Full Migration. At this stage, you'll also have the option to add a Migration Insurance Plan. This service provides a safety net, allowing you to re-migrate your data a certain number of times within a specific period, which can be invaluable if you discover issues or need to update data post-migration. Learn more about how migration insurance works.

Post-Migration Steps

Completing the data transfer is a significant milestone, but the migration journey doesn't end there. Here are essential post-migration steps to finalize your move to Shopify:

• Thorough Data Verification: Rigorously check all migrated data on your Shopify store. Confirm that products (courses), customer accounts (students), and orders (enrollments) are accurate, complete, and display correctly. Pay close attention to pricing, images, descriptions, and any custom fields.
• Configure New Shopify Features: Explore Shopify's vast ecosystem. Set up payment gateways, shipping zones (if selling physical products or course materials), taxes, and explore apps from the Shopify App Store to enhance functionality. Remember that for customer reviews, the Shopify platform often requires an app like AirReviews, as per platform limitations. Also, consider any specific settings like disabling notifications during sensitive periods.
• Implement 301 Redirects: If you used the “Create 301 SEO URLs” option during migration, these will be set up automatically. However, it's wise to double-check them and implement any additional redirects for pages that might have changed their URLs or were not automatically handled. This is crucial for maintaining your SEO rankings and ensuring a smooth user experience, preventing broken links.
• Update DNS Settings: Point your domain name to your new Shopify store. This step makes your Shopify store live and accessible to your audience under your established brand URL.
• Optimize for SEO: Review and optimize your product (course) pages, collections, and blog posts for search engines. Update meta titles, descriptions, and ensure image alt texts are in place. Leverage Shopify's built-in SEO tools.
• Test Everything: Conduct comprehensive tests of your store's functionality, including the checkout process, customer account creation, contact forms, and any integrated apps. Ensure that students can easily enroll, pay, and access their courses.
• Communicate with Your Audience: Inform your existing students and customers about the platform change. Provide clear instructions on how they can access their accounts and courses on the new Shopify store.
• Discontinue Teachable: Once you are fully confident in your Shopify store's performance, you can officially deprecate your Teachable account.

Migrating from Teachable to Shopify is a strategic move that provides a powerful, scalable platform for your online courses and broader e-commerce ambitions. While the CSV-based approach for Teachable requires careful data preparation, the benefits of Shopify's robust features, extensive app store, and integrated sales tools make it a worthwhile transition. If you encounter any challenges or require expert assistance, don't hesitate to contact us.