Short answer: yes, and it should be the default approach, not a premium option. Your WooCommerce store can keep taking orders throughout almost the entire migration process, right up until a short, carefully planned cutover window. Here's how that actually works, and where the real risk points are if it's not handled carefully.
Why downtime isn't actually necessary for most of the process
The core insight is that migration and launch are two different events, and there's no reason they have to happen at the same moment. Building the new Shopify store — setting up the theme, migrating the initial catalog, configuring apps, building the redirect map — doesn't require your live WooCommerce store to be offline, or even aware that any of this is happening. It's a parallel build, not a modification of the live site.
What the actual sequence looks like
Build phase (store stays fully live). The Shopify store is built, themed, and populated using an export or API pull from WooCommerce. This can happen entirely in the background — customers browsing and buying on the live WooCommerce store never see any indication that a new store is being built.
Data sync and delta migration (store stays fully live). Because the build phase can take days or weeks, new orders and customers keep coming into WooCommerce the whole time. A proper migration plan accounts for this with a delta sync — capturing anything new that's happened since the initial data pull — right before cutover, so nothing placed during the build phase gets lost.
QA on the new store (store stays fully live). Testing happens on the Shopify store's own domain (a .myshopify.com URL or a staging domain) while the real domain still points at WooCommerce. Customers are never exposed to a store that's mid-testing.
DNS cutover (the only point with any real risk of interruption). This is the moment your domain's DNS starts pointing at Shopify instead of your WooCommerce host. DNS propagation typically takes anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on your DNS provider and TTL settings. During this window, some visitors may briefly see the old site and some the new one, but this is not the same thing as the store being down — both versions are live and functional, visitors are just inconsistently routed to one or the other for a short period.
Post-cutover monitoring. Once DNS has fully propagated, you're monitoring for any issues — broken redirects, unexpected 404s, payment gateway configuration issues — and fixing them quickly, ideally within hours, not days.
Where real risk actually lives
Orders placed during the DNS propagation window. Because both stores are technically reachable during propagation, it's possible (though uncommon with well-configured DNS) for an order to land in WooCommerce after the cutover has technically begun. A careful migration plan includes a final delta check after full propagation confirms, catching anything that slipped through.
Payment gateway reconfiguration. Your payment processor needs to be connected and tested in the new Shopify store before cutover, not after. This should be verified with a real test transaction, not just checked visually in settings.
Email and notification continuity. Transactional emails (order confirmations, shipping notifications) need to be sending correctly from the new store before cutover, so customers who order right after launch don't experience a gap in communication.
Inventory sync timing. If inventory levels change during the build phase (which they will, since the store is still live), the final data sync needs to capture accurate stock levels right before cutover, not stock levels from whenever the initial export happened.
What "zero downtime" doesn't mean
It doesn't mean zero risk, and it doesn't mean nothing needs monitoring. It means the store keeps functioning and taking orders throughout the process, with a short, well-planned cutover window rather than a multi-day "under construction" period. The difference between a smooth zero-downtime migration and a rocky one usually isn't whether downtime happens — it's whether the delta sync, payment testing, and post-cutover monitoring were planned for in advance or improvised after something already went wrong.