Multinational e-commerce platform Shopify was down around 12:30 a.m. ET on Monday, with reports of problems mounting on the outage tracker Downdetector, and the platform itself admitting “issues trying to sign in to Shopify.”
Screenshot from Downdetector showing Shopify outage reports.(Down detector)
“Merchants may be experiencing issues when trying to sign in to Shopify. We are currently investigating and will keep you posted,” Shopify said in an update.
“Merchants may also experience issues logging into POS, mobile devices and when trying to contact Shopify support,” the Canadian e-commerce giant added, acknowledging the issue.
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“We are continuing to investigate and apply mitigations for issues with access to administrators and POS systems. Some merchants may also experience an issue with POS checkouts due to not being able to access POS systems,” was the latest update from Shopify, shared at 12:39 p.m. ET.
The outage comes on Cyber Monday, one of the biggest sales days in the US, which takes place every year on the first Monday after Thanksgiving.
Netizens express frustration
Comments on Downdetector indicate that the outage is not limited to the US, but has also affected some users in Canada, Colombia and Argentina.
With shoppers flocking to the platform to cash in on Cyber Monday deals, the outage has understandably frustrated many.
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“Any info on when shopify will be up and running? Losing so many orders today/delayed delivery (sic),” wrote a user on Downdetector.
“Of all the days left down! I can’t log in and add all the new stuff that just came in! Missing sales! (sic),” commented another frustrated user.
What do we know about the problem?
Although Shopify did not clarify what was causing the “issues”, users suggested that it could be related to the OAuth open authorization framework.
“I’ve been down on the admin side since about 9:30 A. I was working fine on the admin side, but it kicked me out – seems to be something going on with OAuth? (sic),” a user wrote on Downdetector.
On the Shopify site, the Admin service showed “Partial Outage” at 2:31 PM ET, while the Support, Point of Sale and API and Mobile services showed “Reduced Performance.”
Checkout, which was previously listed as “partially out” as of 12:39 PM ET, was declared “operational” in the latest update.
Other Services, Storefronts, Oxygen, Reports and Dashboards and Third Party Services were all listed as “Operational”.
Has the problem been resolved?
Around 2:31 PM ET, Shopify gave shoppers a potentially promising update that signaled a return to normalcy.
“We have found and fixed an issue with our login verification process and are now seeing signs of a resumption of admin and POS login issues,” the e-commerce platform said.
“We continue to monitor the recovery,” Shopify added.
