Pausing your store

If you want to take a pause from selling on Shopify temporarily, but continue working on your store, then you can use the Pause and Build plan.

Considerations for pausing your store

Review the following considerations before pausing your store:

  • If you have received funding through Shopify Capital, then pausing your store will affect your remaining Capital advances.
  • The Pause and Build plan isn't available to Shopify Plus stores.
  • Your store must meet the following requirements to select the Pause and Build plan:
    • You must be the store owner.
    • Your store needs to be past the free trial period.
    • Your store needs to be on a paid plan.
  • Consider uninstalling any third-party apps that have recurring charges so that you're not billed for those apps after you pause your store.
  • When you decide to unpause, you'll need to select a new plan as your old plan is no longer valid.

Pause your store and continue to work on it

When you use the Pause and Build plan, your store continues to run at a reduced cost of $9 USD per month. You can access your Shopify admin and edit your products when you need to, but your checkout is deactivated. This means that customers can review your products, but they can't purchase them.

The Pause and Build plan might be the right choice for you if, for example, your store is seasonal, or if it's only open for a specific period of time.

On the Pause and Build plan, you can perform the following actions:

  • Access your Shopify admin.
  • Access basic reports about your site's performance.
  • View your online storefront.

During the time that your store is paused, you can't use online store checkout, POS, discounts, abandoned checkout recovery, gift cards, or third-party integrations such as Facebook and Google to publish your products. You can send draft order invoices, but the customer won't be able to complete the checkout process and draft orders can't be converted to live orders.

Steps:

  1. Log in to your store as the store owner.
  2. From your Shopify admin, click Settings > Plan.
  3. Click Deactivate store > Pause and build plan.
  4. Carefully review the plan details, and then click Switch to Pause and build.

Your store will be paused and running at for a reduced subscription fee. If you want to start selling products again, then you can reopen your store at any time by choosing a new plan.

Work on your store on the Pause and Build plan

On the Pause and Build plan, customers can still review your products, but they can't buy them. To improve your customer experience, you can customize your theme to hide your product prices and hide the Add to cart buttons so that customers don't try to buy anything when your store is paused.

If you don't want to display your products when your store is paused, then you can use a password to protect your online store. This way, customers can't access your products when your store is paused. You can customize your password page and write a message that displays to your customers when your store is paused.

All your apps remain active after you pause your store. If you want to pause your apps, then you need to cancel them individually.

Reopen your store after you pause and build

Selecting the Pause and Build plan means that when you decide to unpause, you'll need to select a new plan as your old plan is no longer valid. When you're ready to reopen your store, log in, and then select a new plan that's best suited for you.

Steps:

  1. Log in to your store as the store owner.
  2. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Plan.
  3. Click Pick a plan, and then click Choose plan for the plan that you want.
  4. Carefully review the plan details, and then click Start plan.

After you select a plan, you can start selling again.

If you set up a password for your store when it was paused, then you can remove your online store password.

Can't find answers you're looking for? We're here to help you.