Can you Pause A Shopify Store? Is It Possible?
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If you’re thinking about opening a Shopify store for the first time (or you already have one), then you’ve thought about whether or not it’s possible to pause it for a while.
It’s easy to see why someone would want to give their stores a break, but it’s also easy to see how people might be afraid of losing their progress if they decide to place their store on hold.
Well, to solve the question right away, yes, you can pause a Shopify store if you so desire. It doesn’t disappear it; it’ll stay live and your customers will still see it, but no one will be able to order.
Pausing your store costs $14 each month.
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How does pausing a store work?
Anyone with a store on Shopify may pause it or even close it anytime they want. That’s one of the advantages of the platform, for it lets you adjust your management to your own schedule and preferences.
Pausing the store can be done through Shopify’s interface after you log into your own account. You must do it yourself; the Shopify team can’t do it for you as of the time of this writing.
You must cancel each subscription individually for all apps you’re running in your store. If you don’t, they’ll keep running, and you’ll still have to pay for their costs even if you’re not using them. Open each app and hit the button to cancel.
Your account must be completely in order before pausing it. That includes settling and paying all charges you may have pending before you pause it.
Having your store paused will lower your monthly payments to $14 regardless of which plan you’re subscribed to. After the holding period, you’ll have you choose a plan again to reopen the store; you can stick to the one you had previously, or you can pick a different one.
What happens while your store is paused?
Your store won’t disappear; it’ll keep running, and it’ll be visible to customers, who’ll be able to see all pages, look through your listings, and even send products to their buying cart. That’s where all functions stop.
Pausing is essentially simply disabling your store’s checkout so that no one can place orders.
Store management also stays the same. You’re still able to enter your store, access the interface and customize everything like you always could. You can even edit and import products and changing the theme and design of your store.
Pausing your store within your trial period is useless, though. You won’t get extensions, and you can’t pause the trial. It’s still 14 consecutive days, and you’ll have to choose a plan after that time finishes even if your store spent any time paused.
You can remove your prices and the option of adding products to the cart if you want to save time for your customers, but make sure you revert those changes when you reopen your store.
Additionally, you can also use your admin interface and watch your site’s analytics regarding performance. You can also edit your stock and products.
How can you pause a store?
There are basically just four steps for pausing your store.
You must obviously log into your account and click the Settings tab from the interface. Once there, go to Plan and permissions or your Account tab. Once there, read the terms and click on “Pause Store”.
As an important note, those are the same steps for both closing your account permanently and selling it to someone else via Shopify Marketplace.
In case you close down your store, then you won’t have to pay anything, but your store remains live for a month on the platform’s servers. Note that you still can’t retrieve it in that time.
You’ll also be restricted from accessing your store and account as well as the dashboard, so make sure that’s really what you want to do.
Pausing alternatives
An alternative is to simply set a password for protecting your store. If you do so, then your visitors will be met with a page asking for a password; they can’t pass this page without the password.
That means your customers can’t purchase anything, just like with the pause option. However, this method also keeps them from accessing your store at all, so they won’t be able to see your products.
Why would you pause a store?
First off, you’ll want to pause your store if you won’t be able to manage it for a long period and you don’t have anyone that can run it for you.
However, it’s also a great way to make some time for large changes. The most common case is when you want to rebrand it or make significant changes to its design. You can also use the downtime for reducing costs according to downturns.
You can also take a break from it and dedicate to projects or issues you left unattended over handling your store.
Finally, you can simply use the pause for identifying new opportunities regarding products you can add to your store.
Conclusion
If you want to take a break from Shopify or need time for focusing on other aspects of your life or business, then you can pause your store at any time. It helps you reduce maintenance costs and keep orders from coming in and interrupting your personal matters.
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