In a shocking turn of events this Cyber Monday, Shopify experienced a nationwide outage that prevented thousands of merchants from logging in, managing transactions, or crying quietly into their dashboards while checking conversion rates every 14 seconds.
The company reported “login authentication issues,” technical jargon meaning someone probably unplugged something critical during a standing-desk yoga stretch. Shopify insisted things were “recovering,” which is also what your aunt says after her third glass of boxed Moscato and a minor fender bender.
According to Downdetector, nearly 4,000 users reported problems during the peak of the outage. Experts say the real number of affected merchants could be much higher, because many Shopify merchants learned years ago that screaming into the void doesn’t count as a verified support ticket.
The outage hit during the height of Cyber Monday, when America abandons its principles, friends, and loved ones in order to save $6 on athleisure leggings. Adobe Analytics projected U.S. shoppers would spend over $14 billion online this year, which, after fees, refunds, and chargebacks, leaves Shopify merchants with enough net profit to buy a gluten-free scone and maybe a sticker.
Shopify spokespersons directed media inquiries to the company’s status page, which featured comforting phrases like “partial outage,” “degraded performance,” and “whoops lol.” The company later declared the issue fixed, but warned that some merchants “may still observe disruptions,” which loosely translates to: the POS system is hungover and needs electrolytes.
Meanwhile, Shopify executives boasted that the platform handled $6.2 billion in Black Friday sales, a 25% increase from last year, prompting Wall Street analysts to ask, “Cool, but could you please grow faster while simultaneously losing less money and inventing a new global payment paradigm by Thursday?”
Merchants expressed mixed emotions: relief that services returned, disappointment in lost revenue, and smug satisfaction that they do not use Squarespace, because that would be worse somehow.
Industry insiders say the outage will lead to “important lessons” for retailers, including the need for:
- Better backup systems
- Clearer communication channels
- A full-body paper bag to hyperventilate into when their entire business goes down because Chad in DevOps forgot a semicolon
At press time, Shopify reported continued “positive signs of recovery,” while small business owners reported a continued “negative amount of patience left for this nonsense.”