Shopify Hit With Hours-Long Outage on Cyber Monday — Thousands of Stores Affected
Cyber Monday — one of the biggest online shopping days of the year turned chaotic for many businesses after Shopify suffered a major outage, leaving merchants unable to process orders for hours and frustrated shoppers stuck with frozen carts.
The platform, which powers millions of online stores globally, began experiencing issues early Monday, with merchants reporting problems ranging from slow checkout, payment failures, to complete storefront downtime. For many small and medium-sized businesses, this was the worst moment for an outage to happen.
What Caused the Outage?
According to early reports from Shopify’s status dashboard, the disruption stemmed from unexpected traffic surges tied to Cyber Monday sales. While the company typically prepares for record-breaking traffic during Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, this year’s spike reportedly overwhelmed parts of their infrastructure.
Some developers tracking the issue noted intermittent failures in Shopify’s API, checkout servers, and payment processing layers. These issues combined to produce widespread slowdowns across stores.
Shopify acknowledged the outage, saying its engineering teams were “actively working to restore full functionality” and urging patience as they rolled out fixes across affected systems.
How Merchants Were Impacted
For many Shopify sellers, those lost hours were painful. Cyber Monday is often the single biggest revenue day of the year, and the outage led to:
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Missed orders and abandoned carts
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Delayed promo launches
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Refund issues
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Customer complaints on social media
Some merchants reported revenue losses in the thousands, while others described the experience as “a nightmare you never want during peak season.”
Shoppers Also Affected
Buyers trying to take advantage of Cyber Monday deals encountered:
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Pages not loading
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Failed checkout attempts
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Double charges in rare cases
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Timed-out transactions
This sparked frustration online, with hashtags like #ShopifyDown gaining traction on X (Twitter).
Shopify’s Response
Shopify’s tech teams gradually restored services within a few hours, and by mid-day, most merchant dashboards and storefronts were back online. The company is expected to release a more detailed technical explanation once a full internal review is complete.
In a brief statement, Shopify apologized to merchants and emphasized that reliability remains a top priority especially during peak global shopping events.
A Tough Blow on a Critical Day
The outage comes after Shopify celebrated a strong Black Friday, reporting billions of dollars in sales across its platform. But Monday’s disruption highlights the massive pressure major e-commerce providers face during holiday shopping spikes.
For merchants, the incident is a reminder of how dependent online businesses are on platform stability especially during sale events where minutes can mean thousands of dollars.
As Cyber Monday spending continues to grow worldwide, all eyes will be on Shopify to ensure stronger resilience in future peak seasons.
