Checkouts are not available for this store.

[adminEWE]

Our Shopify development store encountered such weird issue 2 days ago. Just can't finish the checkout process. Could anyone help with this?

[JoshHighland]

I'm also coming up against this issue. A simple fix would have a 50 cap on the orders, but deleting some would give you back capacity.

Better solution - lift the cap if the checkouts are from the bogus gateway

Creating burner stores is a hassle to developer

[jstaab]

Just going to pile on here, this has broken the workflow I've used for years to maintain our app. Draft orders was a very convenient way to build our app, since it allowed us to avoid dealing with the online store builder and point of sale stuff, which aren't relevant to what we do. Expect development of new apps to decrease with every developer-hostile change you guys make and fail to address.

[geon]

This is an unnecessary limitation set that is blocking our workflow.
I second this comment where he shared a video that perfectly outlines the problem. 
The accepted solution is not acceptable!

[Shay]

Hello everyone! 

I've gone through your feedback and I reviewed @APIANT 's video, which many of you referred to as a perfect showcase of your issue. Thank you Apiant for the video clip, as it really helped me to understand where the confusion is coming in from. 

The issue you are having with not being able to use the bogus gateway is because you are still trying to create the order using the draft order function in the store admin. As noted in our Help Docs - You can't test using draft orders you create in your Shopify admin. You need to place test orders using the development store's checkout.

That test order cannot be created using the steps you are currently attempting. All test orders through the bogus gateway MUST go through the online store checkout and not as a draft order. 

Please continue to provide your feedback to this thread and we will review your messages. Our support will provide a like to following messages so that you know we have received it and added it to our feedback for our development team. Please know, that this change was not made idly nor was it done to make your work more difficult. Due to an unprecedented surge of abuse in development stores, this change had to be implemented this way. If you are having any issues setting this up in your development store please contact our partner support through the Support tab in your partner dash for additional help. 

[arsuceno]

So @Shay , what is the point of having a button that we cannot use? You should consider blocking or hiding the button when the shop is in development mode, even if what we really want is the option to use it with a limit.

[jstaab]

@Shay I think all that is well understood. There remain two problems with testing orders via the online store:

• The bogus gateway has a cap on the number of sales that can be processed. This is not conducive to long-term maintenance of an app. Raising it via support request is not a solution, it's a workaround.
• Draft orders can't be tested. Not only are draft orders a much more convenient way to test orders (resulting is lower development costs for app developers), there is functionality unique to draft orders.

While the original issue has technically been solved, the bogus gateway/online store workflow remains severely broken. To bring this home to Shopify's bottom line, if new developers can't figure out how to test an order, cadence of new development on Shopify's platform is going to decline. Likewise, the more dev-hostile design decisions that are made, the more likely existing developers are going to be to partner with another eCommerce platform.

[Shay]

Thank you for your follow up questions @jstaab!

The bogus gateway does not have a cap on it for the amount of test orders it can process. If you are seeing an error that the checkout is disabled while attempting to process a test order through the bogus gateway, this means that an attempt to make a live order was made and the checkout was automatically disabled. This can be re-enabled by our Partner support team under their discretion. 

I can also absolutely recognize the importance of being able to test out draft orders. If you are integrating an app or developing an API that needs access to that (@arsuceno), our Partner Support can also review the request and add on a limited number of transactions that can be tested through that method. Is this ideal for developers like yourself? No it isn't and we know that. Hopefully our developers can come to a better middle ground between limiting abuse of our development stores and allowing our developers access to a full testing environment without having to ask our support to unlock those features for them. In the interim I do suggest connecting with our partner support team and open a dialogue with them about the needs for your development store. With legitimate business use cases considerations can be made.

Please continue to provide your feedback, the more feedback we receive on things like this the better chance we have at making a change! I want you to know that my replies here are not meant to mitigate the importance of your concerns, but to ensure you have workable solutions you can use for now. 

[APIANT]

Hi @Shay,

This is our third development store, and our experience is that the checkout function is disabled at the same time the 50 order limit is reached.

I can guarantee no real orders were ever attempted to be placed on these development stores.

Here's what you wrote:

My recommendation to the Shopify dev support team would be to test the process as an external developer before tagging an issue as solved, especially when so many developers are experiencing the issue.

For the rest of the devs out there, our workaround has been to create orders via API for testing as those are not limited. I understand that if you never planned on using these endpoints (create order) it's a pain to have to develop them just for the sake of testing orders...

[APIANT]

We couldn't create a new development store every time we reached 50 orders. This wasn't really feasible as we often test hundreds of orders a week, so we built this template on our platform Smartsheet ➞ Shopify orders. Handles discounts, taxes, payments, fulfillments.

You can install the template here.

Here's a video on how we built it.

It looks like this:

If you need assistance with it, reach out to support@apiant.com

[RaymondVdVelden]

I have a test shop connected to an acceptance environment and this hooks on the location ID of warehouses based on the name. This is required because we need the fullfilment orders before we can process orders.

(another horrible thing, we need

assigned_location_id

in order to figure if if each order made is supposed to be for us).

For us making a new test shop every 50 orders is impossible as the location_id would change, all the shop items would need resync. I need a proper solution. I want to make orders in draft like I always did. 

[Liquify]

Hi @Olivia 

the accepted solution here written by you is absolutely not correct and a monumental pain in the ass - can you revisit this one internally?

6k views in 6 months on this one is a lot of developer time wasted - it reflects really badly on Shopify when staff can't be bothered to find solutions to clear problems. The limits should be lifted completely on dev stores - draft orders and through bogus gateway. It's wasting our time and slowing us down.

I can't test our app today without wasting an hour creating a new dev store and replicating what we need.

[Shay]

Hi @Liquify 

Thank you for your feedback on this topic. I know that the change to how test orders are processed through developmental stores has received a lot of feedback from our partners on the platform. 

While I am not able to make any changes to your development store, you absolutely can continue to process test orders through the online store checkout as long as you have the bogus gateway setup. The bogus gateway is a specific gateway that needs to be used. 

With the bogus gateway setup, you can process unlimited test orders through the online test store checkout while still in development. If you are seeing a restriction on that, please reach out to our partner support through your partner dash to have that hold lifted.

[Liquify]

Hi @Shay 

100% - we can't. This is what we are all saying. We have Bogus gateway setup & previously encountered no restrictions. Now checkout blocked.  See here:

https://www.loom.com/share/212b60a2ed7b45cda2c56d1a29c46c91

I'll contact partners and get it lifted if that's what's needed and do this on a store by store basis.

Point is still valid that this post has a lot of views, a lot of developers getting frustrated with the same problem and an answer that is factually incorrect from 2 shopify staff.

There should be zero restrictions on orders on dev stores.

Cheers

Joe

[bt95]

I'll keep it real simple. We are trying to make money, and you make money from our apps. Please restore the draft order functionality for test stores so we can all make money.

You are the number 1 ecomm platform. Make it easy for us to do our jobs again and support your sellers. My company processes tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of orders a day on your system and I can't be the only one here. My QA guys can't even test our code.

[sameerkumar]

This issue still exists in 2022.

Going to try and reach out to Partner support for any block lifting 😞

[Shay · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone!

Thank you all for your feedback on this topic. It’s not going unheard and our Development team is aware of this thread and the feedback you have made regarding this change. 

Our developers have not turned away from this topic and continue to assess the best way to provide development store functionality along with the ability to create orders. 

Important

If an order is processed using a draft order or a live payment gateway in a development store then the ability to process any orders will be locked. This includes restricting orders through any of the supported options provided. 

If this has happened to your store, please contact Partner Support for a review of the account.

Once unlocked, processing an order in a method not shared on our Testing orders in development stores page will lock the checkout once more.

Options for order creation and testing:

• Enable test mode for your payment provider
• Shopify Payments
• A third-party payment provider
• Use Shopify’s Bogus Gateway (recommended)
• Create test orders using the Shopify Admin REST API or GraphQL API.

If you require access to additional live orders to test an app or other custom function you will need to contact Partner Support for a review. Please be ready to answer questions such as:

• Why do the provided solutions not work for you?
• What and how are you trying to test?
• Is this store intended to be handed off to a client or for strictly testing purposes only?
  

Note: If you need to process live orders, outside of testing, then the store must be moved to a paid plan. Development stores are not intended to process live orders, which is why the order functionality is limited. 

Reminders: 

• You can't test orders using real transactions in a development store.
• You can't test using draft orders you create in your Shopify admin in a development store. 
• If your checkout is locked, contact Partner Support to have the store reviewed. 
• Review Testing orders in development stores for further information. 
• Review Development store types to ensure you’re using the correct Development Store for your testing needs

We will continue to share new feedback posted here with our Development team. Thank you again for your feedback.

This post will be marked as the solution to ensure other partners and merchants who are working in development stores can easily find the most up to date information about this topic. 

[Ed29]

Hi Shay,

Thank you for taking the time to answer but I am not sure how this is giving us any new information or making us believe that "It’s not going unheard and our Development team is aware of this thread and the feedback you have made regarding this change. Our developers have not turned away from this topic and continue to assess the best way to provide development store functionality along with the ability to create orders.".

We still don't have an easy solution to create to orders.

[stefanosx]

I got the same error when I was able to create an order normally through the admin UI, and suddenly I started getting this error. Looks like Shopify has a limit of how many orders you can create for a development store, in my case was 50 and if you exceed this limit the checkouts are blocked and you have to contact their support.

if found this answer here: https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-apps/checkout-system-disabled-merchant-s-trial-period-expire...

[Shay]

Hi @stefanosx 

I wanted to clarify that the thread you were referring to is a few years old and the processes for a development store have changed since then. 

Shopify no longer provides the ability to have 50 live test orders through a development store. You can review the help center documents I linked in my earlier post to read more about the processes for a development store currently. If you are developing an app or another feature that requires live orders to test please reach out to partner support for a review of the account. 

[stefanosx]

@Shay 

Thank you for your reply!

I tried things mentioned in the previous post, but nothing worked. I also contact support but they couldn't provide a solution at the moment.
I end up creating a new development shop and I was able to create orders and test the things I wanted to test.