Why is my 3rd party domain still showing SSL pending?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A user is experiencing persistent issues connecting a .co.za third-party domain to their Shopify store. Despite working with their domain hosting company and making the required DNS changes (A and CNAME records), the domain remains stuck on “SSL pending” for several days with no progress.

Current symptoms:

  • HTTPS access shows a 403 forbidden error
  • HTTP access displays a partially loaded “under construction” page
  • SSL certificate validation message indicates it should apply within 48 hours, but hasn’t

Key concern: The user cannot remove or delete the domain to retry the setup—no deletion option appears to be available in the Shopify domains tab, despite seeing this feature in other users’ videos.

A second user has commented experiencing the same problem, but the issue remains unresolved with no solutions provided yet.

Summarized with AI on November 13. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi There,

After several days of troubleshooting this with my domain hosting company and without any success i have come here in hope of a solution.

I have a .co.za domain that i am trying to connect to my shopify store and ive followed all the necessary step to get this to ‘see’ it with all the A and CNAME changes to the DNS without any luck.

To make matters worse i am not even able to REMOVE this domain and try again - it has been stuck on SSL PENDING for several days now with no changes. If visiting the website with https it displays a 403 forbidden error message and when doing it with http it does not load the page correctly either but at least shows a partially loaded ‘under construction’ page.

What’s most concerning is that i can not even remove or delete this domain as there is no option to do so despite seeing many videos of others having this choice.

Under the domains tab i have the following options: connect existing, more actions (transfer domain) and buy new domain.

my domain is displaying underneath these three options as below:

Your SSL certificate is being validated and will be applied to your store within 48 hours.SSL pending

Primary for Online Store

Online Store

2

Why is no one commenting on this issue, I have the same problem