Shopify experiences outage reports worldwide on Cyber Monday

Business owners worldwide expressed frustration after Shopify, a leading e-commerce platform, experienced widespread downtime for several hours on Cyber Monday, one of the peak online shopping days of the year. Reports of login problems began circulating around 9 a.m. ET, with many users taking to social media to call the disruption embarrassing.

The company acknowledged the issue on X, stating: We're aware of an issue with Admins impacting selected stores, and are working to resolve it. For the most up-to-date information, please refer to our status page at shopifystatus.com. Thank you for your patience.

According to Downdetector.com, over 4,000 retailers reported problems at the height of the outage around 11 a.m. ET.

Shopify, a Canadian firm, is one of the largest independent e-commerce platforms globally, with more than five million users and nearly $300 billion in transactions processed in 2024, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The platform is popular among small businesses but also serves major companies like Nestl, PepsiCo, Kraft, Heinz, Whole Foods, and Red Bull.

By 2:30 p.m. ET, Shopify announced that the issue had been resolved and that it was monitoring the recovery. We have found and fixed an issue with our login authentication flow, and are seeing signs of recovery for admin and POS login issues now. We are continuing to monitor recovery, the company posted.

In a subsequent update, Shopify clarified: We experienced a system degradation that has now been mitigated. Checkout and storefronts remained online, but access to admin interfaces was temporarily disrupted for some merchants. POS systems were briefly affected but restored quickly. We continue to monitor recovery and will provide updates as necessary.

Despite these efforts, users expressed dissatisfaction. Shopify going down on Cyber Monday has got to be one of the biggest fails of the year, commented one user on X. Another added: How embarrassing. Shopify has been down all morning on the biggest sales day of the year for online shops, especially SMALL BUSINESSES. They should refund everyones fees this month.

A third user, who relies on the platform for their business, remarked: Absolutely wild that Shopify Admin was down for over 2 hours on Cyber Monday. I had nearly everything automated, but many merchants were left unable to edit prices or content on their stores.

The Independent reached out to Shopify for further details on the outage and the underlying cause.

Author: Sophia Brooks