A General Guide to Pausing Your Shopify Store

[Ava]

If you need to take a break from selling or you are about to start redesigning the look of your store, pausing your plan could be a great option for you. We will go over this in more detail below!

Note: Pausing your store will only show as an option for you in the admin section if you have been on a paid plan for at least 60 days after your trial has ended.  It is not possible to move from the trial plan to a paused plan; you must be on an active subscription plan for at least 60 days in order to pause your store.

The Pause and Build plan

The Pause and Build plan is a great option for you if you need to take a break from selling. This plan costs $9 USD every 30 days, and is best suited for merchants that want to stop selling but would like to continue working on their store. If you are thinking of rebranding/redesigning your visuals, taking a break from seasonal selling, or simply need to step away from selling for the moment, this plan is the one for you.

As mentioned above, this will only show as an option for you if you have been on a paid subscription plan for 60 days first. Other exceptions to this would be:

• Merchants with active Shopify Capital
• Plus merchants

On this plan, your storefront is active, which allows customers to view the live website. It also allows you access to the admin so you can keep working on your store, as well as view basic reports about the site's performance. 

The Pause and Build plan will disable the checkout so customers cannot purchase from you. Access to POS, discounts, abandoned checkout recovery, gift cards, or third-party integrations such as Facebook and Google to publish your products will also be disabled/restricted/removed. 

Steps:

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

Considerations before switching plans

Before switching to the Pause and Build plan, be sure to consider the following:

• The Pause and Build plan only includes 1 staff account.
• This plan is available on a monthly term only.
• If you have any outstanding invoices, these must be paid before the plan can be changed.

App charges will NOT be paused while you are on this plan. If you are thinking of moving to the Pause and Build plan, this would be a good time to take stock of the apps you’re currently using and consider uninstalling any with recurring charges that you won't need while your store is paused. If there are any apps you’d like to remove, you will need to uninstall them one by one from the Apps section of the Shopify admin. 

Getting your store ready to Pause

Now that you've decided the Pause and Build plan is right for you, you can get your storefront ready to reflect that update. Customers will still be able to view your live storefront and scroll through your products and collections, so it’s a good idea to hide your product prices and also to hide your add to cart button to avoid customer confusion. This will ensure your customers can’t add an item to the cart while the checkout is inactive.

Some merchants prefer to close off their storefront by enabling their storefront password while they are working on their store. This option would be worth exploring if you are working on redesigning the look of your store, or are re-branding your business’s image; you can keep your work hidden from your customers while you are in development. If you’d like to do this, you can enable your storefront password by going to the admin and selecting Online Store > Preferences > Password Protection > Enable Password. 

Once the password has been enabled, we would recommend adding a message to your password page for your customers so they know your store is still there but won’t be accessible for a period of time. You can edit the look of your password page from within your themes storefront editor, but we also offer a range of page building apps in the Shopify App Store if you’d like greater control over the look and feel of your password page.

Close vs Pause

Closing a store is a route you should only take if you are completely done with selling, or you want to step away from your business altogether. Once you close your store, we will store your data and your website on our servers for 2 years. This is a backup measure, in case you change your mind after closing your store; you can log back in within that timeframe and re-activate your site so all your work will still be there for you. If you did reopen within that time frame, you would start off a new billing cycle from that date. You would be billed every 30 days after that date moving forward.

If you’re thinking of closing your store completely we would recommend downloading any reports or information you may need before you close, as you will not have admin access after closing the store. CSV file exports would be the most efficient way of downloading your store data, and you can transfer your domain away to another host provider too! Be sure to check out the full list of steps to take before closing your store in our Help Center article here.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Plan.
2. Click Cancel subscription or Pause or cancel subscription.
3. Review the options to pause your subscription, or sell your store.
4. If you still want to cancel, then click Cancel subscription and close store.
5. Select a reason for the cancellation, and then click Continue.
6. Enter your password, and then click Close store.

Re-opening your store

If you’re ready to start selling again, you can follow these steps to reopen your store:

Steps:

• Log in to your store as the store owner.

• From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Plan.

• Click Pick a plan, and then click Choose plan for the plan that you want.

• Carefully review the plan details, and then click Start plan.

After you select a plan, you can start selling again! You do not have to select the plan you were originally on before you paused, you may feel it is time to upgrade. Check out our Help Center here for a breakdown of each plan and it’s features so you can select the plan that is best for your business.