Free resource
The Shopify Outage Survival Checklist
Exactly what to do before, during, and after a service outage so you protect your revenue and keep customers informed.
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Phase 1: Before an outage (set up once)
- Set up monitoring on all payment processors you use (Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments). These are your highest-revenue risk.
- Enable SMS alerts on your phone number, not just email. You need to know immediately, not when you check your inbox.
- Know your backup payment option. If Stripe is down, can you enable Shopify Payments or PayPal as a fallback? Confirm this now.
- Write a store banner message in advance: "We're aware of a checkout issue and are working to resolve it. Sorry for the inconvenience." Keep it saved in a doc so you can paste it in 30 seconds.
- Add your team to alerts (Slack, Discord, or email). Don't be the single point of failure.
- Bookmark your key vendors' status pages: status.shopify.com, status.stripe.com, status.klaviyo.com.
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Phase 2: During an outage (first 5 minutes)
- Minute 1: Confirm the outage is real: check your monitoring dashboard or the vendor's status page. Don't act on a single data point.
- Minute 2: Pause any active paid ad campaigns (Meta, Google). Don't pay to send people to a broken checkout.
- Minute 3: Add your pre-written store banner so customers know something is happening and you're aware.
- Minute 4: Enable your backup payment method if available. Test it yourself with a $1 charge.
- Minute 5: Notify your support team. Anyone reaching out via chat or email should be told there's a known issue, not sent to troubleshoot their card.
- Post a brief update to your social media if the outage is longer than 15 minutes. Silence reads as negligence.
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Phase 3: After the outage resolves
- Remove the store banner and re-enable your ads. Confirm with a test checkout first.
- Review abandoned carts from the outage window. Email those customers with a discount code; many will convert.
- Check your support inbox for complaints or questions that came in during the outage. Respond personally.
- Calculate the approximate revenue impact: (outage duration in hours) x (your average hourly revenue). This is your business case for investing in better monitoring.
- Note what worked and what didn't. Update your pre-written templates and processes for next time.
- Post a recovery update to social media if you posted during the outage. Closing the loop builds trust.
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