Shopify's Cyber Monday Outage: A Holiday Season Headache
The e-commerce giant Shopify has faced a major setback on Cyber Monday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The platform's users were dealt a double blow as some merchants struggled to log in, while others experienced outages with their checkout and admin systems.
In a statement posted on X at 6:11PM yesterday, Shopify announced that it had identified a system degradation issue that was quickly resolved. However, the outage briefly affected the point-of-sale (POS) system, which also saw "degraded performance" in its API and mobile support systems.
Shopify continued to work on resolving issues with accessing admin interfaces for some merchants, as well as problems with POS checkouts due to a lack of access to the POS systems. In an update at 12:39PM ET, the company stated that it was continuing to investigate and apply mitigations for these issues.
However, the company's own account posted just hours before the outage, boasting about its ability to handle high traffic volumes during the holiday rush, sparking irony given the recent disruption. The team had claimed a wait time of 56 seconds in their previous post on November 27, which has yet to be replicated.
In an update at 2:31PM ET, Shopify announced that it had fixed an issue with its login authentication flow and was seeing signs of recovery for admin and POS login issues. While some services are still experiencing disruptions, the company hopes to minimize the impact on holiday shopping.
As one of the largest ecommerce platforms in the US, powering 12 percent of online sales, Shopify's reliability is crucial for many major brands such as Netflix, Mattel, Supreme, Glossier, and Converse.
The e-commerce giant Shopify has faced a major setback on Cyber Monday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The platform's users were dealt a double blow as some merchants struggled to log in, while others experienced outages with their checkout and admin systems.
In a statement posted on X at 6:11PM yesterday, Shopify announced that it had identified a system degradation issue that was quickly resolved. However, the outage briefly affected the point-of-sale (POS) system, which also saw "degraded performance" in its API and mobile support systems.
Shopify continued to work on resolving issues with accessing admin interfaces for some merchants, as well as problems with POS checkouts due to a lack of access to the POS systems. In an update at 12:39PM ET, the company stated that it was continuing to investigate and apply mitigations for these issues.
However, the company's own account posted just hours before the outage, boasting about its ability to handle high traffic volumes during the holiday rush, sparking irony given the recent disruption. The team had claimed a wait time of 56 seconds in their previous post on November 27, which has yet to be replicated.
In an update at 2:31PM ET, Shopify announced that it had fixed an issue with its login authentication flow and was seeing signs of recovery for admin and POS login issues. While some services are still experiencing disruptions, the company hopes to minimize the impact on holiday shopping.
As one of the largest ecommerce platforms in the US, powering 12 percent of online sales, Shopify's reliability is crucial for many major brands such as Netflix, Mattel, Supreme, Glossier, and Converse.
shopify's struggles highlight how quickly we rely on technology to facilitate our daily lives, and how much stress it puts on the systems that support us 
it's like trying to rush through life without taking a breath - eventually, you're gonna choke 
what's interesting is that shopify itself seemed almost glib about its own limitations in their post right before the outage... i mean, who boasts about wait times on social media? 
now, they're scrambling to fix issues that could have been mitigated with more humility and foresight 
, but at the same time, I'm like "wait, you guys just posted about handling high traffic and now you're having outages? Like, aren't they saying the same thing?" 
It's all a bit confusing. And don't even get me started on how frustrating it must be for merchants who were trying to do their holiday shopping... I mean, can't we all just get along with our online payments 
?! But seriously, 56 seconds might seem like nothing, but when you're dealing with thousands of transactions, that's a whole lotta wait time 
. Can Shopify just get it together for once? 
& admin systems its like "lol we can handle all this traffic" NOPE 56 sec wait time was like 1 sec lol now they r saying its fixed tho & stuff so lets hope its true 
#ShopifyFail #CyberMondayOutage 
. I mean who wants to deal with outages on the biggest shopping day of the year? It's like they're playing a cruel joke on their merchants and customers alike 
. And can we talk about how unprofessional it was for them to post about handling high traffic just hours before the outage happened? Like, own up to your mistakes and be real with your users! 
#TransparencyIsKey #CustomerServiceMatters 
#ShopifyRecoveries #LessonsLearned 
.
. gotta step up their outage-recovery game ASAP 
. The irony is just killing me - they were all like "we're ready for high traffic" and then BAM, system degradation issue 
. I mean, I get it's holiday season chaos, but can't we expect more from our e-commerce platforms? 
At least they're working on fixing the issues now, fingers crossed everything goes back to normal soon 
. And seriously, how do you even manage to have a login authentication flow issue and then just "fix" it without any warning? Poor merchants who were stuck in limbo while trying to get their online stores up and running 
. It's like they said one thing in their tweet, but then didn't follow through 
.
, but hopefully, they can rebuild their reputation quickly