Ever wished that you could connect Shopify to WordPress?

You’ll see a lot of comparisons of Shopify vs WooCommerce and WordPress. But it actually doesn’t have to be a “vs” thing – you can use Shopify and WordPress at the same time.

The basic idea is that you use Shopify to manage your store’s backend, fulfillment, and checkout process, while still using WordPress to control the frontend of your site.

In a way, it’s the best of both worlds – the simplicity of Shopify for the mission-critical technical details and the flexibility of WordPress for the frontend display.

ShopWP is a flexible tool that helps you set up this connection. In a nutshell, it lets you sync your Shopify products to WordPress as their own custom post type, which gives you full control when it comes to displaying them on WordPress.

There’s a lot more to it than that, though…

In our hands-on ShopWP review, we’ll share more about exactly what it offers and give you a step-by-step look at how it lets you connect Shopify to WordPress.

ShopWP Review: What Does the Plugin Do?

The high-level feature of ShopWP is that it lets you sync your Shopify products to WordPress and use WordPress to control your frontend store.

Your WordPress site works just like a standalone eCommerce store (including having its own on-site shopping cart), but all of the product information comes straight from Shopify. Additionally, when shoppers actually go to finish their purchases and checkout, that part will still be done on Shopify.

All of your order data will show up in Shopify and you can use all of Shopify’s tools for fulfillment, customer support, and so on.

Here’s an example of what a variable Shopify product looks like on my WordPress site. You can see that shoppers are still able to choose the variants:

What’s more, if a shopper adds the item to their cart, they can still manage their cart directly from WordPress:

It’s only when they go to check out that they see Shopify:

Once they finish their order, it would show up in Shopify just like the person had ordered via a Shopify storefront.

Obviously, there are a lot of technical details that go into making that happen.

Let’s go through them…

ShopWP Syncs Product Data as a WordPress Custom Post Type

First off, ShopWP syncs all of your Shopify product data to WordPress as its own custom post type. This means that you have 100% control over how it displays on WordPress, which isn’t the case with a lot of other solutions that rely on iframes or Buy Buttons.

You can also use other WordPress plugins such as Yoast SEO, ACF, and lots more.

ShopWP also supports more than just simple products, including variable products and subscription products (as you saw in the example above). And, beyond individual products, you can also sync product collections.

You can also set up ShopWP to automatically sync details so that your WordPress products automatically update when you edit them in Shopify.

Create Your Own Store Designs and Templates

To control the design of your store’s content on WordPress, ShopWP gives you lots of options:

• Native WordPress editor – use shortcodes and blocks in the native editor.
• Page builder integrations – use Elementor or Beaver Builder to design your own product templates.
• Custom code – create your own template files using PHP and HTML. ShopWP has its own API to help you work directly in WordPress theme template files.

Beyond creating single product pages, ShopWP also lets you create your own store listing page on WordPress that includes helpful features such as product filters and search.

On-Site Shopping Cart (and Shopify for Checkout)

To create a true eCommerce experience, ShopWP still lets customers access their shopping carts from your WordPress site.

The only time that they’ll switch to Shopify is when they go to actually check out.

However, you can set it up so that shoppers still check out on a subdomain of your WordPress site, which helps you create a cohesive shopping experience.

ShopWP vs the Shopify Buy Button

The Shopify Buy Button is a core Shopify feature that lets you add a “Buy” button to any other site. As such, you could already use the core Buy Button to let people buy Shopify products from WordPress.

So – why not just use that instead of ShopWP?

Well, the important thing to understand is that ShopWP goes way further than the Buy Button when it comes to connecting Shopify to WordPress.

Unlike just adding a button or an iframe, ShopWP actually syncs your product data to WordPress as its own custom post type. This gives you infinitely more control when it comes to adjusting the display of your products, displaying data, adding filters, and so on.

ShopWP also includes its own WordPress cart experience, so shoppers can still access their carts without leaving WordPress.

Basically, ShopWP lets you create a true eCommerce experience on WordPress, rather than just bolting on an external product.

Can You Still Use Shopify Apps With ShopWP?

Yes and no. If the app is designed to modify the frontend of your store (e.g. adding content to the single product page), it probably won’t work because you’re using WordPress instead of Shopify for single product pages.

However, apps that modify backend functionality or checkout functionality should still work.

For example, if you use an app to manage your inventory or fulfillment processes, those should still work fine because everything is happening on the backend.

If you still have other questions, I encourage you to read the very detailed ShopWP FAQ page.

What Shopify Plan Do You Need to Use ShopWP?

ShopWP only requires the cheapest Shopify plan – Lite. This plan costs just $9 per month.

However, you might want one of the higher-tier plans to access more backend features when it comes to inventory management and fulfillment – it depends on how complex your store is. You don’t need those plans to use ShopWP, though.

How to Connect Shopify to WordPress With ShopWP

Now that you know what ShopWP offers, let’s look at what it’s actually like to use ShopWP to sync Shopify to WordPress.

To get started, I’ll assume that you already have a working Shopify store and a working WordPress site.

1. Connect WordPress to Shopify

To begin, you’ll install the ShopWP plugin on your WordPress site.

Then, the first step is to connect WordPress to Shopify by going to ShopWP → Connect and hitting the button.

First, you’ll enter your Shopify store URL:

Then, you’ll be prompted to install the ShopWP app on your Shopify store if you haven’t done so already.

From there, you’ll be taken back to the plugin’s settings with a notice that you’ve successfully connected your store:

Then, you can choose where to create your store listing pages (on your WordPress site):

Next, you can choose whether to link products to your Shopify store or to their page on your WordPress site:

Finally, you can choose whether or not to show a fixed cart tab and how to open the checkout page:

Overall, it’s a very smooth and streamlined setup process – you can tell thought has been put into both the features and the user experience.

2. Sync Shopify Products to WordPress

Once you’ve connected your store, the next step is to sync your Shopify products to WordPress.

You can either sync all of your products or just choose specific products to add to WordPress.

ShopWP gives you two options for syncing:

• One-time Sync – you can manually sync details whenever needed.
• Auto Sync – ShopWP will automatically sync product details at an interval that you control. For example, if you edit a product in Shopify, those changes would be automatically synced to WordPress without you needing to lift a finger.

You can access these by going to ShopWP → Sync:

To control the actual sync settings, you would go to ShopWP→ Settings → Syncing. Here, you can choose which products to sync and how much product information to include:

Once you finish the sync, you’ll see the products when you go to ShopWP → Products:

They’ll also show up on the frontend of your site. Speaking of…

3. Control Product Display

Because ShopWP syncs your products to WordPress as their own custom post type, you have 100% control over how they look on your WordPress site. Again, this is one of the big advantages of using ShopWP over the Shopify Buy Button or iframes.

Here’s what they look like with the default design and the Kadence Theme:

To help you control product display, ShopWP gives you several options:

1. Default page layout – ShopWP includes its own default layouts that work fine for simple use cases, as you can see in the screenshot above. You can also customize it from the ShopWP settings.
2. Shortcodes – you can use these to list products.
3. Gutenberg blocks – these function similarly to shortcodes.
4. Elementor integration – use Elementor to design single product pages.
5. Beaver Builder integration – use Beaver Builder to design single product pages.
6. HTML/PHP templates (named the “Render API”) – create your own custom HTML templates (for developers).

4. Set Up Subdomain for Checkout (Optional)

As I mentioned above, ShopWP does not handle the checkout process – customers will still be taken to Shopify when they check out.

By default, this means that the checkout will be hosted on your store’s myshopify.com domain name.

If you’re fine with this behavior, you don’t need to do anything.

However, if you want to create a more branded experience, you could use your own subdomain for the checkout instead of Shopify.

For example, customers would shop at wpmayor.com and then go to checkout.wpmayor.com for checkout.

Here’s how you would set this up:

1. Create a subdomain in your hosting dashboard.
2. Add DNS records to that subdomain to point it to your Shopify store.
3. Add the subdomain as your primary domain in your Shopify account.

5. Configure Other Settings As Needed

Finally, I should point out that you also get lots of other settings to control how your store functions.

You can access these by going to ShopWP → Settings:

ShopWP Pricing

ShopWP comes in a free version at WordPress.org along with a premium version with more features.

The free version alone already comes with a good number of features, including automatic syncing and support for product variants.

Then, the premium version adds support for some more advanced technical features, such as conditional cart loading, custom cart attributes, webhooks, selective syncing, custom HTML templates, and more.

Beyond added technical flexibility, you also get some other important “core” features including the following:

• Support for subscription products.
• Dedicated Gutenberg blocks.
• A fully functional Shop home page including filters.
• Direct checkout.

To see a full comparison of ShopWP free vs Pro features, you can go to the Features page.

Here are all of the features that both versions offer:

And here are the features that are only available in ShopWP Pro:

If you need ShopWP Pro, there are two license options:

• Solo – $199 for a one-year license – use on 1-3 WordPress sites, all core ShopWP Pro features, and private support via the developer’s Slack channel.
• Agency – $499 for a one-year license – support for unlimited sites, the same live support, and free access to all plugin extensions.

So the main advantage of the Agency plan is unlimited site support and those extensions. At the time of our ShopWP review, there are four extensions:

• Yotpo Product Reviews
• Recharge (subscription products)
• Elementor integration for design
• Beaver Builder integration for design

If you’re on the Solo plan, you can also purchase these extensions independently for $49.99 each.

Beyond the pricing for the plugin itself, you’ll also obviously need an active Shopify subscription. However, remember that you only need the Lite plan, which costs just $9 per month.

Final Thoughts on ShopWP

Overall, I think there are a lot of benefits to this setup. Again, you kind of get the best of both worlds:

• Shopify gives you rock-solid security and reliability when it comes to checkout and all of the key backend functionality.
• WordPress gives you total flexibility when it comes to your frontend store. You also get to benefit from WordPress’ huge plugin library.

To connect the two, ShopWP gives you a much more functional and flexible integration than trying to just use the Shopify Buy Button.

Because it’s actually syncing product data as its own WordPress custom post type, you have total control over everything that happens on WordPress.

If you want to try it out for free, you can use the free version of ShopWP to test things out. Then, consider upgrading to ShopWP Pro to access more useful features.

You can use the buttons below to get started…