Unable to Log into Shopify in Mainland China

[vincentpoont2]

All my colleagues are in China, and they are unable to login to my Admin page. I called Shopify and they told me there are some report that some Chinese merchant is having issue Logging. They recommend me to use VPN.

This is a big blow to my business and very unacceptable. VPN has not a reliable solution. I don't know if this is affecting EVERY merchant in China or only certain ones.

Anyone have any idea or tips?

[vincentpoont2]

The problem is that my Colleague in China can not log into the Shopify system when they are located in China. Shopify told me they working on a solution, but this is a big issue for us. 

[Victor]

Hi @vincentpoont2,

We have received reports of some merchants in China not being able to access shopify.com URLs, including their own admins and Shopify documentation, since early December. This is a known issue that our developers are aware of and are continuing to investigate, although this problem is not something we can likely solve quickly or directly on our end.

Please feel free to contact our support team directly and let them know that you are experiencing this issue, as they can take down your information and pass it on to our technical department for further review.

[scom]

Is there any update on this? For companies that are manufacturing and fulfilling product from China, having the ability for staff members to access shopify in order to manage fulfilment is essential. Its been incredibly unreliable over the past few months and getting worse. This needs to be addressed ASAP

[rebol2n]

It looks like it has improved a bit on my end, are you still having issue

[scom]

Its been stable for about 2 weeks but today its totally inaccessible. If its a random outage for a short time I would not complain, its when it we cant access it for 24+ hours that it starts to really impact our business. 

[Alessandro92]

Hey Scom, sounds like a typical China Firewall problem.  Here is a Free China Firewall testing tool that you can use to help ID the issue.

We’ve had luck getting clients Shopify sites stable and fast in China using this Shopify China accelerator.

[scom]

Yeh, it shows up as being blocked. Just surprised or maybe I shouldn't be, that Shopify is not taking any action to solve this. There must be hundreds of shop that have their fulfilment handled in China, not to mention Chinese-based companies that use Shopify that must be affected by this.

We currently have to use a VPN but its far from ideal and to be honest, I'm already sick and tired of paying for so many 3rd party apps for what should be basic functionality. 

[Alessandro92]

Frustrating right... Unfortunately, that's the nature of China, and it's not just Shopify. Most "Western tech" doesn't work in China, thanks to the firewall. Even if the firewall doesn't block a site, its deep packet inspections will severely slow everything down to the point of making a Tech hosted outside of China virtually unusable for users in China without a VPN.

Not ideal as it's a 3rd party service and cost extra, but we've had luck with Yammo's to get Shopify's tech working in China. https://www.yammo.io/

It requires a bit of setup, mostly on their end. And a couple of licenses to be compliant with China regs (which they helped us get).  But once set up, it everything worked as if you were in Italy or Canada. 

[scom]

Yes, I totally understand, been dealing with over 10 years of the China GFW and it has only been getting worse. They do tend to focus on only blocking politically sensitive services but of course many share the same network or resources which is probably why Shopify is getting impacted. Having said that, Shopify should be able to avoid censorship as its providing e-commerce services not a platform for open discussion. Anyway, appreciate the feedback, will take a look at yammo