Shopify goes down for thousands during Cyber Monday mania

Shopify went down during the height of Cyber Monday mania, with thousands of online shoppers and merchants reporting login issues and problems navigating the E-commerce website worldwide.

The first reports of Shopify issues began to trickle in just before 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time, gaining momentum to reach a peak in the US of more than 4,000 user complaints by 11:00 a.m. ET, according to the internet monitoring site Downdetector.

Shopify was also reported down in the UK, with more than 2800 outages shown spiking at 9:45 a.m. ET on Downdetector.

At 10:00 a.m. ET, Shopify addressed the issue on X and on its status support page. “We're aware of an issue with Admins impacting selected stores, and are working to resolve it,” it said, urging customers to “remain logged in on any devices that are currently logged in” while mitigation efforts were being applied.

Although the company stated that only "selected stores" were affected, many users disagreed, with some claiming "Every store I know of is unable to login."

Besides holiday shoppers, the Shopify status page noted about 12:40 p.m. ET that merchants were also having issues accessing their "Admins and POS (point of sale) systems," which handle transactions, inventory, and customer data.

“Some merchants may also see an issue with POS checkouts, due to not being able to access POS systems. Online store checkouts are not affected,” the company reported, prompting others to wonder if Shopify would reimburse users.

“It’s been 3 hours, fees should be refunded for this entire day,” they commented on X.

Finally, in its most recent update at 2:31 p.m. ET, it appears the issues have been resolved, with Shopify stating that a “fix had been implemented” with the outages caused by “an issue with our login authentication flow” and that it was now “seeing signs of recovery,” it would continue to monitor.

Shopify issues widespread across globe

Downdetector showed that 56% of Shopify users reported problems logging into the Canadian-based platform, 25% had issues with the website itself, and another 19% experienced problems connecting to the Shopify server.

Frustrated users in the US and from all over the world, from Australia, Italy, and the Netherlands to Sweden, the UK, Colombia, and Mexico, took to the internet monitoring site to comment on the outage, and the recovery.

“Are you kidding!? I got kicked out!” one user complained on one of the busiest online shopping days of the year.

“Down in Delaware still but orders are coming through – able to view via mobile,” reported another user.

"Back-office login is working again from France ! Good luck to all of you !" a French merchant also commented.

The all-in-one e-commerce platform and mobile app enable businesses to sell online and in-person, locally and globally, through both direct and wholesale channels, according to the Shopify website.

The company boasts over five million customers and says it processed over $292 billion in transactions last year, with nearly 60% of those transactions taking place in the United States.

Cyber Monday is reportedly the biggest online shopping day in the US, with strong momentum from Black Friday and AI-powered shopping tools expected to drive sales, according to Reuters.

US consumers are anticipated to spend a whopping $14.2 billion on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe Analytics, rising 6.3% from last year.

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