p class=”desc”>The best Shopify export product images app is one that exports images from Shopify to a folder on your hard drive – that’s pretty basic – but not as easy to do as you’d think without resorting to coding in the Liquid editor or pulling your hair out over a spreadsheet.
When a merchant leaves Shopify to move to a custom next.js or webflow site, or perhaps migrate to woo commerce with thousands of products, each with a corresponding thousands of product images, those image files need to manifest into real files on the new site, named and organized structure in such a way as to be able to be re-imported in the future. Shopify doesn’t provide a good out-of-the-box way to accomplish this, the standard product information is stored in a big CSV, and every product is defined with a number of image urls. Simply saving those images, right-click > save image as, is something that might take a few minutes to save out maybe 20-30 product images before your wrist gives up.
Disclosure: CS Export Product Images are ours > ranked #1 because for a migration job, this is the winner. If you just need a CSV of metadata, then Matrixify is probably sufficient.
In this post
- The migration scenario
- What matters in an image exporter
- 1. CS Export Product Images
- 2. Matrixify
- 3. Excelify
- 4. Shopify native (the no-app way)
- Side by side
- Why is this so hard?
- FAQ
The migration scenario
The biggest complication of all: Every single migration project I’ve done has one thing in common: Product photos uploaded natively to iPhone have names like IMG_3829.HEIC. Shopify converts these JPEG HEIC files to plain JPEGs on upload. The CDN URLs for these products have names like cdn.shopify.com/files/products/IMG_3829_grande.jpg with a hash suffix added whenever any edits were made. None of that name means anything to a human. None of that name is the SKU of the product. None of that name will import correctly to a new platform without a filename change first.
Three things for migration to SoStockPhoto to consider: 1) the bytes of the file and 2) the file name to match the product handle or SKU and 3) a column in the CSV that indexes the file to the product. These three elements make up the classic migration trio that not all exporters are able to accomplish fully. Read more about our full export guide why these three elements are important.
What matters in an image exporter
I see it in 3 steps – file bytes, filename and index metadata. To complete it I would want to include all three.
File bytes: The tool should download the actual image files and put them in the zip. No one wants to click on a bunch of CDN URLs just to have the tool fail to download files. CDN URLs become stale in a matter of hours and by the time the tool is completed and released the CDNs would have changed again. For anyone looking to leave Shopify or make a backup of their store these file bytes are absolutely essential.
Filename. Exporter must allow re-naming of images based on a pattern including product handle + index, SKU + index etc.whatever is required for destination platform. Currently the exported images have the same file names as in Local. Hence the problem is not solved. It has just been shifted.
Metadata index – this is a really powerful file that tells 10SP (on the left) which filename belongs to which product handle at which position, and what alt text to use. Without this file, the import on the 10SP end would be a guessing game. With it, the import would be a single mapped pass.
1. CS Export Product Images
Ours. Export Product Images is #1 in the Shopify App Store. This is a screencap of the description on the Shopify App Store, where it’s currently ranked #1 out of 1130 similar apps. The three things it does are listed right at the top, nicely highlighting its key features.
Organize images by collection or vendor/tag? Rename files based on handle, vendor name, or title? Flatten all images into one directory instead of organizing by product? Run the app and in a few minutes you receive a zip file with the organized images and a CSV index with relevant information for each image, arranged by position. The CSV includes the product handle, SKU, image alt text, and original file name. You also receive a download link to access the zip. We managed a catalog of over two-thousand photos in just a few minutes.
What’s good: zero config to get started, the rename pattern is a dropdown not a regex, and the CSV index makes the migration import a one-step job on the other side. Not so good: the ZIP is downloaded in one shot, so for very large catalogs (think 50,000+ photos) you should use the collection filter to split it out ahead of time. We’re looking at chunked exports for the next release.
– For migrations, full backups, brand handover packages etc. where the whole image library on disk is needed by a designer.
2. Matrixify
matrixify can export product image URLs into a spreadsheet but it won’t download the files itself (though there is a tool that can download URLs (e.g. from a webpage, or a csv or excel file) in batches, and you could then use Matrixify to process those files. This is a two tool, two step process, acceptable for engineers, but will be for most other people.
Where Matrixify wins: if you want everything (products, variants, metafields, redirects, customers) in one Excel file as part of a bigger migration, and the image URLs get to tag along so you can wget them later. Not suitable for an image only export.
Best for: multi-resource exports where images are one of ten things you need.
3. Excelify
This is the older name of this Utility, and most of its users were previously users of Excelify. See the comments for that Utility. As with that Utility, this one is designed as an Excel-first Utility. It doesn’t work with image bytes; instead, it expects to find URLs in cells. This should be okay if your migration target is another spreadsheet, but could be painful if it’s a folder named with file names.
Best for: Nostalgic merchants who refuse to upgrade ( And honestly, Matrixify is a lot better.)
4. Shopify native (the no-app way)
? There is no answer. Shopify gives you a product CSV with image URLS that point to the Shopify CDN, and then you have to write a script (or manually click for each image) to download the images, which is awful for a bulk migration.
You can also export via the Shopify Admin API. If you are a developer, you can write a 50-line Node script that steps through products one page at a time, extracts the URLs of the images, and downloads all of them in parallel at the same time. It can take an hour and end up taking 6 hours due to rate limits and edge cases. Just install an app.
Best for: nobody, really, unless you want to learn the API the hard way.
Side by side
| App | File bytes | Rename on export | CSV index | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CS Export Product Images | Yes (ZIP) | Yes (presets) | Yes | Migrations, backups |
| Matrixify | URLs only | No | Yes | Multi-resource exports |
| Excelify | URLs only | No | Yes | Legacy users |
| Shopify native | URLs only | No | Partial | Developers with patience |
Why is this so hard?
I should explain why the export story is not going to be an official part of the platform. Shopify has every incentive to make it difficult for merchants to leave their platform, and even though it isn’t nefarious in nature (it’s just that Shopify doesn’t want to invest in engineering time to build a smooth exit path for merchants leaving Shopify), the export story is not something that Shopify is going to invest in as a core feature. Instead, it will be handled by third-party apps, and you should choose one that treats export as a core product, and not as an afterthought or an add-on to a general data processing type of application. End of rant.
– Don’t be stupid, set up 301 redirects on your old site and use their redirect tool to generate images for you to import here. Migrating from WooCommerce instead? See WooCommerce to Shopify for (counter-intuitively) mostly similar steps.
Before you export
3 things to do first: 1) clean up on the outdated platform before you start, 2) shrink what you’re moving to as little images as possible to reduce space on the new platform, and 3) rename the files on the new platform to add suffixes to the file names for SEO. See the filename SEO guide for the naming patterns you should use, and the file size optimization guide for how to shrink the file sizes. See the CSV import guide if you go back to the old platform for any reason.
FAQ
What is the best Shopify export product images app in 2026?
3. For migrations (and backups) where you need the actual file bytes, plus filename control, plus a CSV index – that would be CS Export Product Images (the script is included in the commercial component). For exports of multi-resource type, where images are just one of the many resources – Matrixify would be the second best option.
Can Shopify export product images natively?
This list doesn’t really matter because the product CSV doesn’t include any bytes for the images. You can use the URL to download the images manually (right-click “save as”) or you can write a script against the Admin API to download them.
How do I export Shopify product images as a ZIP?
Choose an app to help you export your product images in a zipped format. CS Export Product Images is one of my favorite choices for this task as it allows you to filter by collection, vendor, or tag and with the touch of a button your product images are exported in a zipped format.
Can I rename images during export?
Yes, with an appropriate app. CS Export Product Images does have have options to name the exported images. Some other apps do not. Namely, CS Export Product Images has a number of rename presets that can be enabled for the export, including handle-index, sku-index, and title-index. The Matrixify and Excelify apps do not rename during export.
Is exporting product images legal if I am leaving Shopify?
Yes. You uploaded those images and they are your content. You pay for Shopify images to be hosted on their CDN as part of the service, but these images are still your intellectual property and you have every right to take them with you.
Will exporting break anything in my live store?
No. Export is read-only. These images will remain on your Shopify store and only copies of them will be downloaded by the app. No changes will be made to your live storefront.
