Closing for vacations
Although Shopify doesn't have a vacation setting, there are two ways that you can temporarily close your store to the general public, depending on how long you expect to be pausing sales.
Short-term solution: Activate private mode
To temporarily stop visitors from accessing your store, activate private mode for your online store. Private mode means that without a password, customers can't do the following actions on your store:
- Access your site
- View products
- View pages
- Complete orders
When a customer navigates to your site, a landing page with a password option is displayed along with a customizable message explaining why the store is temporarily closed.
When you restrict access to your store, your subscription charges and any other recurring charges continue as expected.
Learn more about activating private mode.
Long-term solution: Pause and Build
The Pause and Build plan keeps your store online and accessible to visitors, but deactivates the following sales channels and purchase related features:
- The online store checkout.
- The Point of Sale channel.
- Discounts.
- Abandoned checkout recovery.
- Gift cards.
- Publish your products on third-party integrations, such as Facebook and Google.
You can access your Shopify admin and edit your products or online store, but customers can't make any purchases.
Selecting the Pause and Build plan changes your subscription fee to $9 USD per month. However, when you decide to unpause, you must select a new plan, as your old plan is no longer valid. When you select a new plan, you will start a new billing cycle and be charged the remaining amount after any credits on your account are applied, if applicable. Learn more about updating your plan.
Third-party apps with recurring charges also remain active, so you might want to consider uninstalling any apps that you don't plan to use during the time your store is paused.
You can pause your store on the Plan page in the Settings section of your Shopify admin.
When you switch to the Pause and Build plan, the change might be scheduled to take effect at the end of your current billing cycle, and the Shopify admin might display a future effective date. If you need to stop customers from placing orders before the change takes effect, then activate private mode in the meantime.
Learn more about pausing your store.