Main issue: Checkout became unavailable on multiple development stores. The requester wondered if this signaled an expired trial or some quota limit.
Key explanation: Development stores using draft orders (admin-created orders) or a live payment gateway can trigger checkout restrictions. This behavior—not necessarily trial expiry—likely caused the error, with a reference to a detailed community solution post.
Clarifications sought: Whether this is a new change, and if moving the development store to a paid plan would avoid the issue. They also asked if production stores on paid plans are unaffected.
Confirmed outcomes: Stores on a paid monthly plan have no checkout restrictions for live payment gateways or draft orders. Production stores on paid plans should not face this issue.
Recommended actions: Contact Partner Support via the Partner Dashboard before changing the store plan if testing methods not supported on dev stores. Subscribe to the developer changelog RSS feed to stay informed about platform changes.
Status: Guidance and a workaround (paid plan) provided. Whether this limitation is newly introduced was not directly answered, so that question remains open.
Does this response mean the trial period has expired? Or could there be any other explanation?
I had this happen to one of my stores today, development store. After creating a new one, another started having the same issue. Oddly enough they were not created on the same date, so it would make no sense for both of them to expire ALMOST together.
I repeat my question: Is there any other explanation other than expiring the trial period? Any quotas I may have accidentally surpassed?
Help please.
Hi @brianh20
Were you using draft orders or a live payment gateway on your development store before this happened? If yes, that is most likely the culprit. I have a detailed post about this that you can review here: Solved: Checkouts are not available for this store. - Shopify Community .
If you are having issues with your development store please ensure to contact Partner Support through your partner dash for help and best next steps.
Thank you @Shay . Is this new? We have been using draft order checkouts on development and production stores for a while now, but only now has this surfaced.
According to the documents you shared, could yo confirm that we would not have this problem if the development store was on a paid plan?
We would be much more confortable paying for the subscription rather than refactoring all our code, at least as an immediate solution.
Also for confirmation, this also means that our Production store on a paid plan will NOT have this issue, correct?
Thanks in advance.
Hey @brianh20
You got it, any stores on a paid monthly plan would have no issues or restrictions on using the checkout with a live payment gateway or through draft orders.
If you are developing something specific that requires testing via methods that aren’t currently supported in a dev store, please chat in with our Partner Support team before changing the store plan as they may be able to assist.
I also recommend signing up for the developer changelog RSS feed to keep up to date on any platform changes that happen in the future: Recent changes to Shopify’s platform.