After a long year of running your business — and hopefully a great holiday season — every store owner deserves a break. Taking time off helps you recharge, boost productivity, and avoid burnout.
For physical store owners, taking a break is simple — they just lock up their shop. But for Shopify store owners, it’s not as straightforward. If you leave your online store open while on vacation, you risk running into unfulfilled orders, stock problems, and unhappy customers.
The good news? You can easily pause your Shopify store using vacation mode and enjoy your time off worry-free. You can always unpause your store later and resume business as usual.
Let’s explore how to do it!
What Is Shopify Vacation Mode?
Vacation Mode is a way to temporarily pause your Shopify store’s operations. During this period, customers can’t browse your products or place orders. It’s a simple way to stop sales while you’re on holiday or taking a short business break.
Why Should You Pause Your Shopify Store?
There are many reasons you might want to pause your store:
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Family emergencies or personal time off
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Business maintenance or redesign
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Stock shortages or supplier delays
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Simply needing a well-deserved break
Pausing your store helps you focus on other priorities and prevent burnout. You can easily resume once you’re ready — refreshed and re-energized.
How to Put Your Shopify Store on Vacation Mode
Shopify doesn’t offer a direct “Vacation Mode” button, but there are two main ways to temporarily close your store:
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Add password protection
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Use the Pause and Build plan
Let’s go over both methods in detail.
Method 1: Add Password Protection
If you want to temporarily prevent customers from visiting your Shopify store, enable password protection. While it’s active, visitors won’t be able to:
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Browse your store
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View products
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Complete purchases
The best part? Your store will still appear in search engines (Google, Bing, etc.), so you won’t lose your SEO rankings.
Steps to Enable Password Protection
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Go to your Shopify Dashboard → Online Store → Preferences
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Scroll to Password Protection
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Check Enable password
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Create a password (make it different from your Shopify login)
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Add a message explaining why your store is temporarily closed and when it will reopen
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Click Save
💡 Tip: You can share the password with loyal customers if needed.
To Disable Password Protection:
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Go to Online Store → Preferences → Password Protection
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Uncheck Enable password
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Click Save
Method 2: Pause and Build Plan
Shopify’s Pause and Build plan lets you keep your store online and visible, but customers can’t check out or make purchases.
While paused, you can still:
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Access your Shopify admin
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Edit products and storefront content
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View basic reports
Your store stays active for $9/month, allowing you to maintain your site while taking a break.
Note:
You can only use this plan after 60 days on a paid Shopify plan.
When you unpause, you’ll need to pick a new active plan before selling again.
How to Pause Your Shopify Store
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Log in as the store owner.
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Go to Settings → Plan.
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Click Deactivate store → Pause and Build plan.
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Review the details, then click Switch to Pause and Build.
How to Unpause Your Store
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Log in as the store owner.
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Go to Settings → Plan.
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Click Pick a plan, then select your preferred plan.
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Review and click Start plan.
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Remove your password if you had one enabled.
Once done, your store will be live again and ready to accept orders.
How to Keep Selling While You’re on Vacation
What if you want to take a break — but still keep your store running?
You can use AI assistants to manage your Shopify store automatically while you’re away.
One example is AskTimmy.ai, an AI-powered chatbot for Shopify that can:
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Keep your store active
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Help customers find products
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Answer their questions instantly
With an AI assistant:
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You won’t lose sales while you’re offline
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Customers stay happy and informed
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No need to hire temporary staff
✅ Sit back, relax, and let AI handle it.
When you return, you’ll find a store that’s still running — with new orders waiting!
Pros and Cons of Shopify Vacation Mode
✅ Pros
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Easy to activate: Just a few clicks to pause or password-protect your store.
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Keeps customers informed: You can display a custom message explaining your break.
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Saves money: Shopify reduces your subscription fee to $9/month and suspends transaction fees while paused.
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Preserves SEO: Your store stays visible in search engines.
❌ Cons
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No sales during downtime: Customers can’t make purchases when your store is offline.
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Limited inventory access: Product stock updates are paused while your store is inactive.
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Manual reopening: You must manually choose a new plan to resume selling.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. How can I grow my Shopify store after vacation?
The easiest way to boost sales is by using upsell and cross-sell strategies.
Apps like Selleasy help you create product bundles, add-on offers, and post-purchase upsells — all designed to increase your average order value (AOV).
2. Will pausing my store affect SEO?
No. Your store will still appear in Google results, so you won’t lose rankings.
3. Can I still access my admin panel while paused?
Yes. You can log in, view reports, edit products, and make design changes anytime.
4. Can I schedule a reopening date automatically?
Not directly. You’ll need to manually unpause the store when you’re ready to reopen.
Running a Shopify store can be demanding — so taking a break once in a while is essential.
With Shopify’s Vacation Mode, you can pause your operations safely without losing your setup, customers, or SEO ranking.
Follow this guide to set up your vacation mode properly, enjoy your time off, and return to your business refreshed and ready to grow.
Relax, recharge, and let your store rest — you’ve earned it! 🏖️