For merchants, developers, and partners relying on Shopify, uninterrupted service is essential. Whether it’s powering a high-traffic storefront or managing transactions through third-party apps, any Shopify outage can disrupt revenue, operations, and customer experience.
That’s where StatusGator comes in. By aggregating the Shopify status page along with nearly 6,000 other SaaS services, StatusGator enables users to monitor Shopify and its dependencies, view a detailed history of Shopify outages, and receive real-time alerts when problems arise.
Our platform also provides a comprehensive uptime history, helping your organization track performance trends and ensure resilience. Now, let’s review the year-by-year Shopify outage timeline next.
June 5-6, 2022 — Multiple Shopify Services Affected in Brief Early-Morning Outage
In the late hours of June 5, 2022, Shopify experienced a brief but multi-service outage. The issue began at approximately June 5, 2022, 23:42 UTC, affecting several services across the platform. Shopify acknowledged the issue via their official support channel and began an active investigation.
Within roughly two hours, the incident was resolved. By June 6, 2022, 01:48 UTC, Shopify confirmed that all services had returned to normal. Merchants who were still facing issues were advised to contact Shopify’s 24/7 support team.
- Incident Start: June 6, 2022, 23:42 UTC
- Resolved: June 6, 2022, 01:48 UTC
- Affected Services: Multiple core services (specific services not disclosed)
- Official Statement: “We’re aware of an issue impacting several services. We are investigating…”
- Resolution: Full recovery confirmed by Shopify within two hours. Although users complained of slow loading.
While Shopify did not list the individual affected services, the vague but broad nature of the alert indicates that merchants and customers likely experienced disruptions across the platform, including potential problems with the Admin dashboard, checkout flows, storefront visibility, or app functionality.
With StatusGator’s status page aggregator, Shopify merchants can track issues like this in real time, view a complete Shopify outage history, and set up alerts via email, SMS, or other channels, ensuring their store performance is always under watch.
May 6–8, 2024 — Widespread Shopify Outages Caused by Edge Network Issues
Between May 6 and May 8, 2024, Shopify experienced a series of widespread service disruptions affecting nearly all core platform functions, including Admin, Checkout, Storefront, API & Mobile, Third-party services, Reports and Dashboards, Oxygen, and Point of Sale. These incidents resulted in multiple outages throughout a 48-hour window, with the root cause traced back to an edge networking change implemented by Cloudflare.
Initial Outage — May 6, 2024 at 20:04 UTC
The incident began at 20:04 UTC, with Admin services going down, followed by additional critical services at 20:24 UTC. Shopify reported that merchants were experiencing errors when accessing the Admin dashboard. The issue was resolved by 20:39 UTC, but this marked only the beginning of broader instability.
Second Outage — May 6, 2024 at 20:49 UTC
Just minutes later, another wave of failures affected Admin, Checkout, Storefront, Point of Sale, and other key services. This more widespread outage lasted until 21:09 UTC, again impacting merchant operations across the platform.
Third Outage — May 6, 2024 at 23:44 UTC
A third incident occurred late the same night, once again bringing down multiple areas of Shopify. All affected services were restored by 00:39 UTC on May 7, but service reliability remained fragile.
Fourth Outage — May 7, 2024 at 12:19 UTC
Roughly 12 hours later, Shopify services again went down for many users. The outage impacted the same core components and lasted an hour, resolving at 13:19 UTC.
Fifth and Final Major Outage — May 8, 2024 at 22:59 UTC
On May 8, Shopify suffered one of the most significant outages of this series. All major services were again affected, and Shopify provided a detailed postmortem analysis identifying Cloudflare network configuration changes as the catalyst. This Shopify incident repeated on May 9, 2024, as these services went down for 10 minutes.
According to Shopify:
“Between 19:49 PM and 20:06 PM UTC on May 6, 2024, one of our edge networking providers, Cloudflare, performed changes to how they route traffic to Shopify. These changes… caused partial traffic loss and widespread errors.”
This traffic drop triggered an automatic scale-down of Shopify’s infrastructure. When Cloudflare reversed the change, Shopify’s systems were not yet fully scaled back up, resulting in further downtime due to capacity mismatches.
Resolution and Remediation
The final incident was resolved by 23:19 UTC on May 8, 2024. In response, Shopify outlined several remediation steps:
- Improving automated scaling systems to better handle sudden traffic fluctuations.
- Strengthening its incident response partnership with Cloudflare.
- Enhancing alerting and escalation procedures for edge-related outages.
- Increasing the resilience and isolation of core services.
StatusGator users monitoring Shopify during this period would have received real-time alerts for each incident. These historical outage patterns highlight the importance of centralized status aggregation and proactive alerting to maintain operational awareness during SaaS disruptions.
March 13, 2023 — Widespread Intermittent Access Issues Across Shopify Services
On March 13, 2023, Shopify experienced a significant outage affecting Admin, Checkout, Storefront, and Support services.
The disruption began at 15:25 UTC, when all four core services suddenly went from operational to down, leaving many merchants unable to access the Shopify Admin or serve customers through their storefronts and checkout pages.
Shortly after the initial outage, Shopify posted an update stating:
“Some merchants are experiencing issues accessing Storefronts and Shopify Admin.”
By 15:39 UTC, Shopify began to partially restore services, moving Storefront, Checkout, and Support to a degraded “warn” status. Five minutes later, at 15:44 UTC, these services were marked as fully recovered. However, Shopify Admin remained down longer than other components, only returning to “up” status at 15:59 UTC.
Despite this recovery, Admin and Storefront services experienced further instability:
- Admin fluctuated between “up” and “warn” statuses until fully stabilizing at 17:59 UTC.
- Storefront services briefly returned to “warn” at 16:34 UTC and were not fully restored until 16:49 UTC.
During the incident, Shopify confirmed that:
“Merchants may have experienced issues when trying to access the Shopify Admin. Storefronts, checkouts, and contacting our Support were also impacted intermittently.”
Shopify noted that all affected systems had recovered by the end of the event and continued monitoring to ensure full platform stability.
August 8, 2022 — Shopify Admin, POS, Checkout, and Reporting Impacted by Repeated Downtime
On August 8, 2022, Shopify experienced a multi-phase service disruption that affected key services including Admin, Checkout, Point of Sale (POS), and Reports and Dashboards. The incident began at 09:54 UTC, when several services simultaneously experienced degradation or complete outages.
Shopify posted the following update:
“Some merchants are unable to log in to their Shopify admin. We are investigating and will keep you updated.”
At the initial onset:
- Admin, Checkout, and POS all went from up to down
- Reports and Dashboards status was downgraded to warn
A brief partial recovery occurred around 10:04 UTC, with POS returning to operational and Admin and Checkout moving to a warn state. However, the recovery was short-lived.
At 10:24 UTC, a second wave of outages hit:
- Admin, Checkout, and POS went down again
- Reports and Dashboards dropped from warn to fully down
Full service restoration occurred approximately ten minutes later, at 10:34 UTC, when all affected services returned to up status.
This outage was notably disruptive as it impaired merchants’ ability to access the Admin panel, process sales, and complete customer checkouts, the core functions for day-to-day operations on the platform.
June 8, 2021 — Shopify Admin, Checkout, and Storefront Affected by Asset Loading Failures
On June 8, 2021, Shopify merchants experienced a partial outage that affected multiple critical services, including the Admin dashboard, Storefront, and Checkout. The issue began at 10:04 UTC, with reports of assets not loading properly, resulting in degraded performance and accessibility across stores.
At 11:00 UTC, Shopify updated the status of several components to “warn”, indicating continued instability as teams worked to resolve the problem. By 11:50 UTC, all affected services were restored to full operational status.
- Incident Start: 2021-06-08 10:04 UTC
- Resolved: 2021-06-08 11:50 UTC
- Affected Services: Admin, Storefront, Checkout
- Status Progression: From “down” to “warn” to “up”
- Message: “Assets not loading for some Shopify services”
- Root Cause (as reported): Asset delivery issues impacting service availability
This Shopify status issue disrupted key functionality across merchant stores, from managing orders to delivering a consistent customer experience. Shopify confirmed they had identified the root cause and were actively working on a fix during the incident.
April 14, 2021 — Major Shopify Platform-Wide Outage Impacts Multiple Services
On April 14, 2021, Shopify experienced one of its most widespread service disruptions, affecting nearly all core components of the platform.
The incident began at 20:44 UTC with an outage to the Admin dashboard, quickly cascading to other services including Checkout, Storefront, API & Mobile, Support, Reports and Dashboards, Third-party services, and Point of Sale.
The Checkouts and Storefronts were inaccessible, preventing purchases and visitor access. Admins and support staff were locked out, while apps and integrations relying on Shopify’s APIs were also affected. The issue lasted for nearly an hour, with full service restored around 21:34 UTC.
- Incident Start: 2021-04-14 20:44 UTC
- Resolved: 2021-04-14 21:34 UTC
- Affected Services: Admin, Checkout, Storefront, API & Mobile, Support, Reports and Dashboards, Third-party services, Point of Sale
- Impact: Stores became partially or fully inaccessible for both merchants and customers. Admins couldn’t manage their stores, and transactions failed at checkout.
Shopify did not provide any explanations about the outage. In two days, on April 16, 2021, the Checkout went down for 1 hour. StatusGator registered the status change, but again, we saw no comments from Shopify.
July 17, 2020 — Widespread Shopify Outage Triggered by Cloudflare Disruption
On July 17, 2020, Shopify experienced a major service disruption that impacted core components of the platform, including the Admin dashboard, storefronts, and checkout functionality. The outage began at 21:27 UTC, with users reporting they were unable to access the Shopify admin, complete purchases, or view store pages.
According to Shopify’s official status page, the issue was tied to a broader Cloudflare outage, which affected connectivity across multiple SaaS platforms globally.
- Incident Start: 2020-07-17 21:27 UTC
- Resolved: 2020-07-17 22:54 UTC
- Affected Services: Admin, Checkout, Storefront
- Root Cause: External Cloudflare outage disrupting service availability
- Impact: Merchants and customers could not access stores, place orders, or manage their admin dashboards.
This outage serves as a reminder of the importance of monitoring third-party services that power your ecommerce operations.
June 11, 2020 — Shopify Admin Login Issues Disrupt Merchant Access
On June 11, 2020, Shopify experienced a service disruption affecting the Admin interface, preventing many users from logging into their accounts. The incident began at 17:19 UTC, with widespread reports of merchants unable to access the Shopify Admin dashboard, halting order management and store updates.
This Shopify outage lasted nearly 1 hour and 35 minutes, with services restored by 18:55 UTC. The issue was confined to the Admin service, meaning storefronts and checkouts remained available to customers, but backend operations were interrupted for store owners.
- Incident Start: 2020-06-11 17:19 UTC
- Resolved: 2020-06-11 18:55 UTC
- Affected Service: Admin
- Impact: Merchants could not log in to the Shopify Admin to manage stores
- Message: Problems logging into Shopify accounts
This event highlights how even partial disruptions to the Shopify platform can significantly affect store operations.
Conclusion
With StatusGator, teams can track Shopify status updates, receive real-time alerts, and maintain visibility into both Shopify and the critical platforms it depends on, helping minimize downtime and improve response times when issues arise.
From email to SMS, Slack to webhook, StatusGator sends timely updates so your team can respond faster, reduce downtime, and communicate clearly with your users.
Start monitoring Shopify status and other critical services today — try StatusGator free.
