Why Your Shopify Store is Unavailable? Solutions to Get Back

Experiencing downtime with your Shopify store can be frustrating, impacting your ability to make sales and connect with customers. A closed store has a negative impact on sales right away and might erode client confidence in your business. It is critical to comprehend the frequent causes of this problem in order to take prompt action.

Our guide, "Why Your Shopify Store is Unavailable? Solutions to Get Back", emphasizes the importance of maintaining an accessible online store. We guarantee prompt and useful solutions to assist you in locating and fixing the sources of downtime, so your Shopify store stays up and accessible to your clients.

What Does "Sorry, This Shop Is Currently Unavailable" Mean?

The inability of a Shopify store to accept orders indicates that users cannot access the website. Several causes might be server problems, technical difficulties, maintenance, or a Shopify system outage. A company's reputation might be damaged, revenues could decline, and consumers could get irate if a store closes.

To minimize the impact on your business, it is imperative that you, as the owner of a Shopify site, comprehend what "Sorry, This Shop Is Currently Unavailable" signifies and how to identify and resolve the issue promptly. In the upcoming parts, we'll discuss the typical causes of inaccessible Shopify stores and how to fix them.

Common Reasons Your Shopify Store Is Unavailable

Payment and Plan Issues

We are unable to access your Shopify site because of concerns about payment and plan. The following are a few common causes for it:

• You haven't chosen a subscription plan, and your existing plan or trial has ended.
• Your credit card payment or any other mode of payment has not been successful.

As mentioned earlier, a Shopify store's deactivation is the outcome of both. You are thus unable to use your store's features and services. This error will be visible when you attempt to log into your Shopify admin.

Shopify Server Downtime

Upgrades, maintenance, or other technical issues will likely cause your Shopify store to drop. As a result, there will be a pause in your store at that time. Your customers won't be able to access your business at this time.

Please note that the Shopify business owner is not responsible for these interruptions. Furthermore, the great majority of outages are limited in nature, meaning that not all Shopify shops will be impacted.

The Shopify team will fix all of these problems. You can visit the Shopify status page to see how long the team expects it to take to resolve the issues.

Problems with the Domain

If you own a Shopify store, one of the following domain-related problems is preventing customers from accessing your site: • Your store's domain name has expired.

• You have updated your Shopify store's primary domain.
• Modified the DNS configuration for your store. Should this be the case, the procedure would be extremely sluggish, taking about 72 hours. It would thus be ideal if you continued to be patient.

You do not need to verify these if you made no modifications to the DNS or updated your principal domain prior to the Shopify outage.

Accidentally Deleted Files

Occasionally, while removing unnecessary files, you may inadvertently erase some of the most important files required to run your shop. Adding new files will result in a loss of data and more downtime.

Your store closes in two situations: first, the removal of necessary code or files. Second, the Shopify shop's functionality must be better integrated with the new line of code. The best method to handle this is by using a backup.

Incompatible Themes or Apps

Over 8,000+ applications are available in the Shopify App Store. In addition, a large selection of premium and a few free Shopify themes is offered online.

Imagine the following situation: you have designed a Shopify site using one of the themes and added several plugins or applications to improve the functionality and speed of your business. Unfortunately, themes and applications don't work well together, and your store's poor performance is negatively impacting the user experience.

CSV Upload Failure

Errors may arise if you upload files in bulk to your Shopify backend that contain customer or product data.

Additionally, these bulk uploads may have an impact on other products in your shop as well as functionality. Ultimately, these factors may result in downtime issues, making your shop inaccessible.

How to Fix the Shopify Store if it is unavailable?

Check Your Domain

• Domain Name Issue: Every store owner has to link their business name to the Shopify domain in case the domain name is faulty. In the event of a misconfiguration, the domain will be immediately disconnected from the specific website.
• Domain Name Server Issue: Your business may fail if your domain name server is misconfigured. To make sure that the DNS is set up correctly, check the settings on your domain registrar.
• Domain Name Expiration Issue: In any event, you should check with the domain provider to make sure your domain hasn't expired if your name has already expired. You may discover when your domain will expire by entering the URL into Whois Domain Lookup.

Check for Ongoing Maintenance

As everyone is aware, Shopify is a dependable platform. That being said, Shopify occasionally makes mistakes or has maintenance underway, which may directly impact your Shopify store's functioning.

Visiting the Shopify Store Status Page is the most effective learning approach. If you want to be sure that other shops are going through similar circumstances, you can also check out some of the community forums. If this occurs for several stores, the Shopify team will resolve the central problem shortly.

Check for Incompatible Themes or Apps

Check if any of the installed themes and applications on your Shopify store are incompatible with one another by going through them all. At this point, turn off any themes or applications not currently operational on your Shopify website. You may get the most recent versions of these themes and applications in addition to this.

Contacting the Shopify team is advisable if the problems persist even after updating to the most recent version.

Restore Your Shopify Store

You have modified your Shopify store several times, and then suddenly, it stops working. Thus, you should keep a backup of the essential data for your Shopify business, including themes, applications, and client information.

Using the backup option, your business may now be restored to its optimal working condition. If you don't have a backup, consider going back to the most recent shop modifications you made.

Use Crowdsourcing Solutions

You can address your issue about crowdsourcing by contacting the community or relevant groups. The vast Shopify Community allows you to contact merchants for assistance with any matters about your store and to determine the cause of its unavailability.

Use Shopify Test Mode

You can discover why your Shopify Store is down by turning on the Test Mode. You may use the Shopify test order and Shopify test payment here. In order to observe your store from a customer's perspective, you can create fictitious purchases and process payments. You may use this to find out when your Shopify store is down.

Additionally, you may report the issue to a customer service agent at the Shopify Store, who will address it.

Contact Shopify Support

There are several methods to contact the Shopify support staff to report an issue, obtain instructions, and receive assistance in resolving it. Typically, people would pick one of the four methods listed below.

• Chat directly: Using the accessible chat system, you can communicate with a member of our Shopify support team. If you decide to verify with your shop first, this will save you a lot of time.
• Email: For non-urgent issues or if you need to provide detailed information, emailing Shopify Support (support@shopify.com) is a good option. They typically respond within a few hours, offering a comprehensive response or directing you to further resources.
• Phone: Shopify offers phone support if you prefer speaking directly to someone. This approach works well for complicated problems that need thorough justifications and guided steps. They include:

• Twitter: It's also advised to use social media to notify people about issues. In this situation, Twitter Shopify Support can also be useful because you can tweet the support staff there to get in touch with them directly.

Suggestion Step: Optimize your Shopify Store with EComposer

On Shopify, there are many third-party apps that help you optimize your website and images, but not all of them are reputable and suitable for your store. Of the thousands of apps on Shopify, you might consider using EComposer Landing Page Builder. 

EComposer is a new-generation Shopify app that has a lot of outstanding features that make building your website easy. By using EComposer you can compress images and optimize all pages (Landing Page; Product Page; Blog Post; Thank you page; Coming Soon Page; Gallery Page; etc.) to improve the loading speed of your website, so your store will be less likely to crash.

TRY IT NOW!

In addition, when choosing EComposer, you also own a unique treasure of templates, extensions, and elements suitable for all needs. They are used by many businesses for many different purposes such as increasing customer experience, increasing revenue, increasing the professionalism of the store and so on. You can read more there: Shopify Website Builder Tutorial: Step-by-Step guide for beginners 

Things to Do While Waiting for the Fix

Communicate with Customers: Keep your customers informed about the issue and provide an estimated resolution time. Use email, social media, and your website to share updates, assuring them that you are working on the problem and will notify them when the store is back online.

Analyze Traffic and Sales Data: Take this time to review recent traffic and sales data. Understanding the potential impact of the downtime can help you plan for a recovery strategy once your store is back online. This analysis can also reveal trends and areas for improvement.

Review and Improve Content: Use the downtime to review and update your store's content. Enhance product descriptions, update images, and optimize for SEO to improve customer engagement and search visibility. This can help attract more customers when your store is available again.

Backup Your Data: Ensure that all critical data, including customer information, order histories, and inventory details, is securely backed up. Regular backups are essential for protecting your business from data loss and ensuring you can recover quickly from any issues.

Plan for Future Prevention: Develop a standard operating procedure (SOP) for handling similar issues in the future. This should include clear roles for team members, communication strategies, and preventive measures to minimize downtime and maintain a seamless shopping experience for your customers.

Read more:

• Why Is My Shopify Store Inactive?
• Why Does My Shopify Store Say "Opening Soon"?
• How to Unpause Your Shopify Store
• My Shopify Website Is Down: How to fix?

FAQs

Why is my Shopify store suddenly unavailable?

Your Shopify store may be unavailable for several reasons, including payment issues, domain-related problems, or temporary outages on Shopify's end. It's also possible that your store's access has been restricted due to policy violations or technical errors. Checking your Shopify admin for alerts or messages is the first step in diagnosing the issue.

What information should I provide when contacting Shopify support for help?

When contacting Shopify support, be prepared to provide your store URL, a detailed description of the issue, any error messages you've encountered, and recent changes you've made to your store settings or theme. This information helps the support team quickly identify and resolve the problem.

How often should I perform maintenance checks on my Shopify store?

Inspections for periodic maintenance are necessary to keep your shop operating smoothly. It's advised to carry out simple inspections once a month, which include checking payment settings, updating themes and applications, and keeping an eye on the functionality of websites. More comprehensive audits should be done quarterly or bi-annually.

Can I automate my billing payments to prevent my store from becoming unavailable?

Yes, you can automate billing payments on Shopify to ensure your store remains active. To guarantee that your clients have uninterrupted access, you may avoid delays due to late payments by setting up automatic payments for your Shopify membership and domain registration.

Conclusion

Experiencing downtime with your Shopify store can disrupt your business and frustrate customers. Knowing how to contact Shopify support and being aware of frequent reasons, such as payment problems, domain issues, or platform outages, can help you promptly address and fix these issues. Regular maintenance checks and automating billing payments are proactive steps to ensure your store remains accessible.

To keep your Shopify shop operating smoothly and reduce future disruptions, we strongly advise you to put these repairs and preventative actions into practice. You can keep up a dependable online presence and give your clients a flawless online purchasing experience by following these steps.