Website builder
Moving a service or brochure site off Shopify
This page is not an argument against Shopify. If you sell products online, Shopify is excellent and you should probably stay. This is for businesses running a service or brochure site on Shopify because it was what they had — and paying a commerce platform’s costs and constraints for a site that never sells anything.
Where you actually stand
Shopify is a commerce platform, and it is a very good one. Its whole architecture — Liquid templates, the product data model, the checkout — is built around selling things. That is not a criticism. It is a description of what it is for.
A service business on Shopify is using a specialised tool for a general job. You are paying a monthly platform fee plus app subscriptions, working inside a structure organised around products and collections, and accepting the performance overhead of a commerce runtime, in exchange for commerce features you do not use.
The content story is also thinner than people expect. Shopify documents CSV exports for products, customers, orders, gift cards, discount codes and financial data. Pages and blog posts are not on that list, and Shopify itself notes there is no native full-store backup and recommends third-party apps for it.
A frozen store locks out your customers and you
This is the sharpest point on the page and it is fully documented. If a Shopify bill is missed, the store freezes at the due date. Customers cannot view it — and you cannot access your own admin.
On theme portability: you can download your theme as a zip, but Shopify’s documentation states it does not include products, collections, menus, pages, blog posts or files. And a Liquid theme is written for Shopify’s rendering engine — it is template code that needs Shopify’s data layer to produce a page, not a website you can host elsewhere.
“If your store is frozen, then you can’t access your Shopify admin and customers can’t view your store.”
“Theme downloads don’t include your store’s products, collections, menus, pages, blog posts, images, or other files in Content > Files.”
What this costs you day to day
Paying commerce prices for a brochure site
Platform subscription plus apps, every month, in exchange for a checkout you never use and a product model you are working around.
A missed payment takes you offline and locks you out
Shopify documents that a frozen store is invisible to customers and inaccessible to its owner. For a service business whose phone rings because of the website, that is a bad failure mode.
Your pages and posts are not in the export list
Shopify documents CSV exports for commerce data. Pages and blog posts are not among them, and Shopify says there is no native full-store backup.
The structure fights you
Service pages become products or dummy collections. Navigation bends around a commerce information architecture. Everything is slightly the wrong shape.
Liquid does not travel
You can download the theme, but Liquid is written for Shopify’s rendering engine. Without Shopify’s data layer it does not produce a website.
How the rebuild works
Six steps, and your involvement is deliberately minimal. We handle the technical side, bring you recommendations, and come to you when a decision or an approval is genuinely needed. You review the finished site before it goes live.
- 1
We audit your current website
We review your existing site — pages, content, SEO, functionality and structure. We identify what should be improved, updated or dropped, rather than copying over things that were never working.
- 2
We rebuild the site in Next.js
Your branding and content carry over, but the site is rebuilt from the ground up in Next.js. That removes the database and plugin dependencies behind most performance, security and maintenance problems.
For Shopify specifically: We capture your pages, blog posts and images from the live site — precisely the content the CSV exports do not cover. If you do have a small product catalogue you want to keep selling, tell us early and we will either build commerce into the new site or connect a dedicated backend.
- 3
We improve it while we rebuild it
This is the part people underestimate. We are not handing you a newer version of the same website. We look for real gains in navigation, page layout, calls to action, mobile experience, content and SEO.
- 4
We preserve your SEO
Existing URLs, page titles, metadata and redirects are all accounted for in the transition. The goal is to move platforms without giving up the search visibility you have already built.
- 5
We test everything before it goes live
Desktop and mobile, every form, every piece of functionality, all content reviewed — checked and working before we touch anything in production.
- 6
We launch
Once you approve it, we move the new site into production. From your side the transition should be uneventful, and your visitors should never see an interruption.
What comes with you
- All pages and blog posts, captured from the live site
- Images at full resolution, re-optimised
- Your design and branding
- Existing URLs, preserved or redirected
- Working forms and enquiry routing
- Your domain, in your name
You own what we build. In writing.
Every rebuild is delivered with a Certificate of Ownership and IP Assignment: a signed document assigning you the copyright in the site code and the content we produce for you, and recording the transfer of the repository, the domain and the hosting account into your name. You are not licensing your website from us. If you ever leave, you take the whole thing with you — the code, the content, the domain, the repository and the deployment history.
- Full copyright assignment in the site code and the content we write for you.
- The Git repository transferred to an account you control, with its full history.
- The domain in your name, at a registrar of your choosing.
- Hosting in your own Vercel account if you want it there — we can manage it, but ownership sits with you.
- No proprietary page builder, no template licence, and nothing that stops working if you stop paying us.
Questions people ask about leaving Shopify
- I sell products. Should I move off Shopify?
- Probably not, and we will tell you so. Shopify is genuinely good at commerce. This page is for service and brochure sites that ended up on Shopify without needing the commerce.
- Can I export my Shopify site?
- Partially. You can download your theme as a zip, but Shopify documents that it excludes products, collections, menus, pages, blog posts and files. CSV exports cover commerce data — products, customers, orders — and your pages and blog posts are not on that list. Shopify also notes there is no native full-store backup.
- What actually happens if I miss a Shopify bill?
- The store freezes at the due date. Shopify’s own documentation states that customers cannot view a frozen store and that you cannot access your Shopify admin. Staff with billing permissions can still see invoices, which is how you pay to unfreeze it.
- Can the new site still take payments?
- Yes. Deposits, bookings and one-off payments are straightforward with Stripe. If you have a real catalogue we will talk through whether a dedicated commerce backend makes more sense than rebuilding it.
Sources
Every claim made about Shopify on this page comes from Shopify’s own published documentation. Read them yourself. We would rather you did.
Also worth reading
Squarespace
The export is a content dump, not a website. Squarespace publishes the list of what it leaves behind.
Read the Squarespace pageWordPress
You own it — but you also own the plugin update treadmill and the security surface that comes with it.
Read the WordPress pageWeebly
Still running, but Square now steers new customers to Square Online. A platform on maintenance is a platform to plan around.
Read the Weebly page
Start by finding out where you actually are
The free scan tells you what your site is built on, what is slowing it down, what search engines and AI answer engines can currently read, and roughly what a rebuild would cost.
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