Shopify’s Cyber Monday outage left thousands of merchants struggling to access their stores during the biggest online shopping day of the year.
Just as millions of shoppers readied their credit cards for Cyber Monday deals, the e-commerce backbone powering thousands of online stores around the world faltered.
Shopify suffered a major service disruption on Cyber Monday, knocking many merchants out of their admin dashboards during the year’s biggest online shopping event. Store owners across North America and Europe reported widespread login failures and frozen backend tools beginning late Monday morning, leaving them unable to manage orders, update inventories, or adjust promotional pricing during peak traffic.
While many storefronts continued loading for customers, merchants warned that they were effectively operating blind. Orders continued to come in, but access to fulfillment systems was limited or nonexistent, creating growing backlogs for small and mid-sized businesses that depend entirely on Shopify to process sales. One frustrated merchant told The SW Newsmag, “This could not happen at a worse time, during my biggest sale of the year,” said a representative of FABA. “I can’t communicate with my customers or fulfill orders, among many other inconveniences.”
In an early update acknowledging the disruption, Shopify stated: “We’re aware of an issue with Admins impacting selected stores, and are working to resolve it.” The company later added through its status feed that it was “continuing to investigate the current issue.” These statements marked the extent of official communication during the height of the outage, prompting concerned merchants to seek information through social platforms.
The incident renewed concerns about the fragility of centralized e-commerce infrastructure during high-volume retail events. For merchants whose annual revenue depends heavily on Cyber Monday spikes, even a brief interruption can translate to significant financial loss and customer service challenges.
Shopify has not yet released detailed findings on the source of the outage, and merchants are awaiting a full post-incident report as order-processing delays and sales reconciliation continue to unfold.
