How to Unfreeze (reactivate) Your Store

[Nick]

If you’ve lost access to your store admin and it’s no longer public due to non-payment, please continue. This means your store is frozen! In this post, we are going to look into why your store is frozen, how to unfreeze it and what charges you’ll see when you unfreeze your store. 

When your store is frozen, your website will be listed as unavailable until you pay any outstanding bills:

You’ll know that your store is frozen due to non-payment as you’ll be greeted with a page that indicates that your last bill payment failed:

Why your store might be frozen?

Your store will go into a frozen state if we have unsuccessfully attempted to collect the pending charges on your account. 

Note: We will not immediately freeze your store if your payment method is declined. In most cases, we will attempt to charge your payment method a total of three times before your store is placed into a frozen state. 

You can see some of the most common reasons for a payment failure that would cause a store to freeze below:

• The credit card you have on file expired.
• Your account has no payment method on file. 
• Your payment method has insufficient funds. 
• You aren’t using a valid credit card from Mastercard, Visa or American Express. For example, a digital bank account or wallet wouldn’t be sufficient. 
• Your credit card doesn’t allow for recurring payments in USD. 
• If you’re paying via PayPal and there is no credit in your PayPal account (this would only apply for non- US store owners). 

Note: If your store is marked as “Frozen” it is for all intents and purposes deemed as closed. While there will be no new invoices created for your subscription plan, it’s possible you can still incur charges for third-party/external sources such as apps.

How to unfreeze your store

If your store has been frozen, only the account owner can reactivate and pay any outstanding charges there might be. You will also need to pay any other outstanding charges which occurred during the time between when the payment was missed and when your store was frozen. To reactivate and unfreeze your store you need to take the following steps:

• Log in as the store owner
• Pay any outstanding fees your store has incurred during the time of your store being frozen. If there are multiple outstanding bills, you will be prompted to pay each of them in full to reactivate the store. To download your bills, you can export your billing history.

Note: There are two bills you will see: 1.) For the outstanding amount and 2.) The upcoming amount. 

• If your store is frozen for longer than 30 days, you will need to pick a new plan when reactivating it. 

Charges to unfreeze your store

A frozen store isn’t accessible to the public, nor will you be able to access the store admin until you pay the outstanding fees. This is the only way to unfreeze your store. These charges might include:

• Subscription plan
• Transaction fees
• Shipping charges
• App fees

That’s it! In this article, we’ve gone over why your store might be frozen and how to reactivate it. We have more information about frozen stores in our Help Center here. If you have general questions about the process, then feel free to comment below. For account specific questions, please contact Shopify Support for further assistance!