Export WooCommerce Products via SFTP

Product Import Export Plugin for WooCommerce allows you to export the products from your WooCommerce website to a CSV file via FTP and SFTP. You can also specify the path to which the file will be exported, in the remote location.

FTP or File Transfer Protocol is one of the oldest protocols in use today to move files from one computer to another. If you are going to use FTP for file transfer, there will be security concerns. When sending a file using FTP, the password entered for transferring a file is sent over the internet without any encryption. This creates a security risk for the files transferred over the connection.

SFTP stands for SSH File Transfer Protocol or is also often called Secure File Transfer Protocol. SFTP is a network protocol that provides file access, file transfer, and file management over a secure channel.

SFTP works in a similar way to FTP but over a secure connection. Unlike FTP, SFTP ensures that the files are transferred safely over a private and secure channel. By default, SFTP uses SSH to create and establish a secure connection. The passwords and file send over SFTP are encrypted.

To implement SFTP with Product Import Export Plugin, a library called NET-SFTP is used. You can find the library here.

Enabling SFTP for Export

After you purchase, install, and activate the Product Import Export plugin for WooCommerce, in order for the plugin to support SFTP, an add-on needs to be installed and activated. The addon can be downloaded from here.

After the add-on has been installed and activated, all the file transfers while exporting with the Product Import Export plugin will take place over SFTP. Exporting products from the WooCommerce store via SFTP can be done in the same way as that of FTP.

To enable FTP settings for exporting products, go to WooCommerce > Product Im-Ex > Settings tab.

1. Enable FTP.
2. Enter your FTP server hostname.
3. Enter your FTP username and password.
4. Enter the port number.
5. Enter your export pathname. If this is not specified then the exported file will be saved in the root directory.
6. Enter the name of your file with which the file will be exported to the specified FTP location.

After these details have been entered, enable the option Automatically Export Products field. Enabling this option will bring you the settings for exporting the products in the CSV file.

1. Enter the product categories that need to be exported. Products of only these categories will be exported to the CSV file.
2. Enter the export start time and interval according to your requirements.
3. Check Include hidden metadata if required.

After the required settings have been entered, scroll down to the end of the page and click on Save Settings. This will export all the product data in the specified time interval according to the settings via SFTP.

Read more about all the functionalities of the product import export plugin for WooCommerce in the plugin documentation.