Is Shopify Down? Understanding the Recent Outage and Current Platform Status
Understanding Shopify’s Recent Service Disruption
The question ‘is Shopify down?’ became urgent for thousands of merchants on 1 December 2025, when Shopify—the e-commerce platform powering over 10% of all U.S. online transactions—suffered a major login authentication failure during Cyber Monday. The timing proved catastrophic, as this occurred during one of the year’s most critical online shopping days.
The problems started at around 9.08am ET / 2.08pm GMT, with reports hitting stores around the world. In the US, there were almost 3,700 reports from frustrated users, while in the UK the reports stabilized at around 1,300. The incident highlighted the vulnerability of businesses relying on third-party platforms during peak trading periods.
What Caused the Cyber Monday Outage
Select merchants experienced issues logging into Shopify, while others were unable to access point-of-sale systems, a critical portal used to manage transactions and other backend processes. The disruption prevented merchants from processing orders, managing inventory, and fulfilling customer needs during what should have been their busiest day.
The company found and fixed an issue with its login authentication flow, and began seeing signs of recovery for admin and POS login issues by mid-afternoon. Shopify stated: ‘We had a system degradation that has now been mitigated’, confirming the issue was resolved by Monday evening.
Current Status and Impact on Merchants
As of 5 December 2025, Shopify is operational, with all systems functioning normally with no reported issues. However, the December outage lasting approximately five to six hours had significant consequences for small businesses during their most critical trading period.
Despite the disruption, Shopify reported $14.6 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) over the BFCM weekend, up 27% year over year, demonstrating the platform’s overall resilience. Yet many individual merchants faced substantial losses during the outage window.
Lessons for E-Commerce Businesses
This incident underscores the importance of having contingency plans when relying on third-party platforms. Shopify advertises approximately 99.99% uptime, which translates to about 52 minutes of acceptable downtime annually. However, this December 1, 2025 incident lasting 5-6 hours was significantly longer than typical disruptions.
Merchants should consider monitoring tools and backup procedures to maintain operations during unexpected outages. While Shopify remains a robust platform serving millions of businesses worldwide, the Cyber Monday incident serves as a reminder that even the most reliable services can experience disruptions at critical moments. For businesses asking ‘is Shopify down?’, monitoring official status pages and third-party tracking services can provide early warnings and help implement emergency protocols.