Why Do I Pay Shopify? An open, angry, letter to Shopify

Shopify Discussion
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Topic summary

A long-time Shopify merchant expresses frustration over the platform’s lack of accessible customer support when facing a serious issue.

Key complaints:

  • Support email (support@shopify.com) was discontinued in 2019
  • Chat and phone support appear unavailable or broken
  • Help Center only redirects to generic articles and community forums
  • No visible method to open support tickets despite official messaging claiming multiple contact options exist
  • Paying customers are effectively left to provide free peer support to each other

Current status:
The merchant questions the value of their monthly subscription when critical support is inaccessible. A Shopify community moderator responds by providing an alternative support link, confirming no system outages are reported, and suggesting standard troubleshooting steps (clearing cache, trying different browsers/connections). The core issue of whether direct support channels are genuinely available remains unresolved.

Summarized with AI on October 26. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
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Why do I give Shopify money every month when they provide no support?

Where is my money going?

Public forums and a “Help Center” are great, but when you really need real support for serious or urgent issues they are not appropriate options for a paid service.

In 2019 they disabled the “support@shopify.com” email address, letting us know just how much they care.

"From August 13, 2019, we have changed how you create a support ticket by email! As part of these changes, support@shopify.com no longer accepts incoming messages.

Instead, to get help or open a support ticket, visit the Shopify Help Center where you can contact our Support team by email, chat or phone."

But the support chat and support phone are down and have been for a long time. There is no way to open a support ticket. Even though their email says you can “…where you can contact our Support team by email…” that option is not there. They have fully abandoned us.

Here is the message you get when attempting to get help on the site the bounced support email gives you:

shopifySupport.png
shopifySupport.png1280×162 47.1 KB

And you may ask, what are the “available contact methods below”? There are none. No methods. ZERO. No chat, no phone, no email, no contact form, no way to open a ticket, nothing. Just a “Help Center” full of generic articles that only help people that don’t know how to use google, and forums that ask paying Shopify customers to provide free support to each other so Shopify can save on support staff. If you have a serious issue requiring actual support from Shopify, you are screwed.

This level of support for a paid service is not acceptable. How do they get away with it?

I’ve been a loyal customer for many years, and have never needed any real support. The one time I do, this is my experience.

I’m done. Why Do I Pay Shopify? An open, angry, letter to Shopify

1 Like
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Hi there, @VexFX !

Welcome to the Community! Definitely a great place to gather some input regarding anything about the platform!

Thank you for your message. We definitely appreciate you sharing your extensive thoughts regarding this matter with our support. Are you able to try this link to see where it leads you?

I understand that you received an error staying certain queues were not available at the time of reaching out but currently on my end, I do not see any outages as per our status page.

Please give that link above a try to see where that leads you to our live support team. If the error persists however, please also try the following troubleshooting steps to see if trying those make a difference:

  • clear cache and cookies
  • try going into private ot incognito mode
  • try a different browser or device
  • try a different wifi/data connection

I am looking forward to hearing more from you. On behalf of Shopify, we appreciate your feedback regarding this matter and am motivated to get this sorted out for you.