Is Shopify Down Today? Cyber Monday Outage, Cloudflare Chaos and What It Means for E‑Commerce (December 5, 2025)

Published: December 5, 2025

As of this morning, Shopify’s own systems are largely operational again after a bruising week that exposed just how dependent online retail has become on a handful of platforms and infrastructure providers.

On Cyber Monday, December 1, a login meltdown inside Shopify locked thousands of merchants out of their backends for hours during one of the most important shopping days of the year. ^[1]

Four days later, on December 5, a separate global outage at infrastructure giant Cloudflare triggered 500‑error messages across huge chunks of the internet, briefly disrupting access to Shopify and many other sites once again. ^[2]

Together, the twin incidents are now a case study in platform risk at peak season. Here’s what happened, what’s going on today, and what merchants can realistically do about it.

Is Shopify Down Today (December 5, 2025)?

Short answer: Shopify’s own platform is up, but it has been hit indirectly by today’s Cloudflare outage.

A December 5 status note on Shopify’s status page says the company is “investigating” an issue with its network provider (Cloudflare) after some stores saw errors this morning. ^[3]
Cloudflare, which provides networking and security services for a huge portion of the web, reported a global incident around 9:00 a.m. UTC causing 500 errors and slowdowns across many sites, including Shopify, Zoom, LinkedIn and several banks. ^[4]
Cloudflare has since said a fix has been implemented and that it is monitoring results. ^[5]

Independent coverage from UK and European outlets notes that Shopify was among multiple platforms returning “500 internal server error” messages while Cloudflare troubles were underway. ^[6]

At the same time, other monitoring suggests that Shopify’s core systems and APIs are again reporting “all systems operational,” with third‑party trackers like Downdetector showing no major, ongoing Shopify‑specific spike in complaints as of late morning. ^[7]

In other words:

Today’s issues are primarily network‑level (Cloudflare) rather than a fresh internal failure at Shopify—but for merchants, downtime still feels the same.

What Happened on Cyber Monday: A Timeline of Shopify’s Outage

When did the Shopify Cyber Monday outage start and end?

Multiple incident reports and status updates paint a broadly consistent picture of the December 1 outage: ^[8]

~9:08 a.m. ET – First wave of error reports hits services like Downdetector as merchants worldwide report being unable to log into Shopify Admin.
Around 11:00 a.m. ET – Outage peaks with roughly 4,000 simultaneous reports in the U.S. and around 2,500 in the U.K., mostly focused on login, admin, and point‑of‑sale (POS) access. ^[9]
Early afternoon – Shopify labels the issue “degraded performance” across Admin, POS, mobile apps, APIs and Support, and urges merchants who are still logged in to stay logged in. ^[10]
2:31 p.m. ET – Shopify announces it has “found and fixed an issue” in its login authentication flow and is seeing signs of recovery for Admin and POS logins. ^[11]
2:40 p.m. ET – Downdetector reports drop to around 128 users still affected. ^[12]
By ~3:00 p.m. ET – Most reports indicate systems are largely back to normal, though some merchants continue to see intermittent POS and support issues into the evening. ^[13]

Overall, the outage lasted about 5–6 hours for many merchants, spanning the heart of Cyber Monday trading.

What exactly went down?

Across major outlets and Shopify’s own status updates, the root of the problem is clear: ^[14]

The incident was traced to Shopify’s login authentication system, not its cloud provider.
The platform’s Admin dashboards, POS terminals, mobile apps and support channels were hit hardest.
Storefronts and checkout pages continued to accept customer orders in most cases, but many retailers were effectively “flying blind”—unable to adjust prices and promotions, manage inventory, or see real‑time order data. ^[15]

CBS News reported that Shopify characterized the event as a “system degradation” that it later said had been “mitigated,” stressing that checkout and storefronts were kept online even as admin tools were inaccessible for some merchants. ^[16]

How Many Merchants Were Affected—and How Bad Was It?

Precise numbers are hard to come by, but the scale was clearly global:

Downdetector counted about 4,000 U.S. reports at peak and 2,500 in the U.K., with additional complaints from Europe and Latin America. ^[17]
Business Insider and other outlets describe the disruption as lasting several hours and affecting everything from in‑store POS to support queues. ^[18]
Pymnts and trade press reports say merchants worldwide lost access to their dashboards, even as online storefronts kept taking orders. ^[19]

Analysts at AInvest estimate $15–30 million in lost or displaced revenue across Shopify merchants as a result of the outage, based on traffic patterns, reported downtime, and historical conversion rates. ^[20]

For individual merchants, especially small stores running limited‑time promotions, a few hours of downtime on Cyber Monday can effectively wipe out an entire day’s sales opportunity.

The Stakes: Record Sales Meet Sudden Downtime

The timing could not have been worse.

Record holiday volumes

Adobe Analytics projected $14.2 billion in U.S. Cyber Monday online spending, up roughly 6% from last year. ^[21]
Shopify itself says merchants on its platform generated a record $14.6 billion in sales over the Black Friday–Cyber Monday weekend, up 27% year‑over‑year. ^[22]
Shopify merchants processed $6.2 billion on Black Friday alone, a 25% jump from 2024. ^[23]

That backdrop explains why the outage hit investor confidence so sharply:

Barron’s reported Shopify shares fell about 4.1% intraday as the outage unfolded. ^[24]
Business Insider and other market coverage put the full‑day drop closer to 5.8–5.9% by the closing bell. ^[25]

The stock reaction reflects a broader investor concern: Shopify now powers over 10% of U.S. e‑commerce, so operational hiccups are no longer just a merchant problem—they are a market‑wide risk. ^[26]

Merchant Backlash: “Left in the Dark” During the Outage

For many store owners, the biggest frustration wasn’t just the downtime—it was communication.

Tabloids and business press alike report merchants flooding X (formerly Twitter) with screenshots of error messages under Shopify’s upbeat Cyber Monday marketing posts. ^[27]
A report from The Logic says retailers felt “left in the dark” as Shopify leaned heavily on AI‑driven self‑service support while human support queues were overwhelmed. ^[28]
Longer‑form post‑mortems note that Shopify’s public incident page offers limited historical detail, making it difficult for merchants to audit what exactly happened and for how long. ^[29]

On Reddit and in community forums, some merchants are now openly asking whether Shopify should offer partial refunds or service credits for going down on the single worst day to go offline. ^[30]

So far, there is no public indication of a Cyber Monday‑specific compensation program or new class‑action litigation tied directly to the outage. Existing class actions against Shopify this year relate instead to data privacy and tracking practices, not uptime. ^[31]

Why Did Shopify Go Down? What We Know About the Cause

Shopify has not published a full technical post‑mortem, but several points are consistent across its own updates and independent reporting:

Root cause: login authentication failure
- Shopify’s status updates and articles from Reuters, TechCrunch and others all point to a bug or failure in the login authentication flow, impacting Admin, POS and mobile access. ^[32]
- This was an internal application‑layer issue, not a cloud data‑center failure.
Scope of impact
- The failure cascaded across multiple services that require authenticated sessions—Admin dashboards, POS terminals, mobile apps and parts of the support stack. ^[33]
Infrastructure vs. application
- Analyses from technology and finance outlets stress that the problem was not caused by Shopify’s cloud provider but by its own authentication systems, raising questions about redundancy and failover for such a critical subsystem. ^[34]

Specialist incident analyses argue that authentication is often a single point of failure: if login fails, core services can remain technically “up,” but merchants are still effectively locked out.

Then Came Cloudflare: December 5 Outage Adds New Anxiety

Just as merchants were catching their breath, December 5 brought a new wave of disruptions, this time from outside Shopify.

A major Cloudflare outage early Friday caused 500 internal server errors and timeouts across a huge slice of the internet, including e‑commerce platforms, news outlets and even Downdetector itself. ^[35]
The Independent and other outlets explicitly list Shopify among the affected platforms. ^[36]
Cloudflare says a fix has now been deployed; status pages indicate the company is monitoring recovery. ^[37]

Shopify’s own status page confirms the dependency:

The company notes that its network provider (Cloudflare) is experiencing an outage, and that it is investigating the impact. ^[38]

This second incident is separate from the Cyber Monday outage—but for merchants, the psychology is cumulative. After losing part of Cyber Monday to an internal failure and then seeing a core network provider stumble days later, many are re‑evaluating how much of their business runs through a single stack.

Despite Outages, Shopify’s Holiday Numbers Are Huge

Ironically, Shopify’s performance across the broader Black Friday–Cyber Monday window has never looked stronger:

$14.6 billion in BFCM weekend sales on Shopify, up 27% year‑over‑year. ^[39]
81+ million consumers bought from Shopify‑powered brands over the four‑day period. ^[40]
More than 94,900 merchants had their highest‑selling day ever on the platform. ^[41]

That contrast—record volumes overall and crippling downtime in the middle of it—is exactly why this week’s events are so important. They show that the question for merchants isn’t just “Which platform can help me grow?” but also “Which platform can I still rely on when the entire internet is under stress?”

What Shopify Merchants Should Do Now

You can’t magically fix Shopify or Cloudflare, but there are practical steps to reduce risk and prepare for the next incident.

1. Monitor multiple status sources

Don’t rely on a single source of truth.

Bookmark Shopify’s official status page and subscribe to alerts where available. ^[42]
Use independent trackers like Downdetector or your own uptime monitoring so you can see whether a problem is local, regional or platform‑wide. ^[43]

2. Plan for “admin‑down, storefront‑up” scenarios

Cyber Monday proved that storefronts can stay live while admins and POS are locked out.

Keep exported CSVs or local copies of key inventory and order data so staff can answer customer questions even if Shopify Admin is unreachable.
Maintain offline or secondary payment options (e.g., fallback card terminals) for physical locations if Shopify POS fails. ^[44]

3. Design campaigns with resilience in mind

When one platform failure can erase half a day of promotions:

Avoid concentrating all discounts into a narrow one‑ or two‑hour window.
Stagger key offers over a longer period (for example, a full Cyber Week) to reduce the impact of a few lost hours. ^[45]

4. Diversify your channels where it makes sense

Merchants increasingly sell across marketplaces, social commerce, and their own sites.

Consider ensuring at least one secondary sales channel (like a marketplace or social storefront) can keep running basic promotions if your main site’s backend is down.
Integrate email and SMS tools that can quickly message customers about delays or workarounds during outages.

5. Push for transparency and SLAs

Given Shopify’s scale, merchants are well within their rights to ask for:

Clearer incident post‑mortems explaining root causes and mitigation plans. ^[46]
More visible uptime guarantees and service credit terms, especially for larger brands operating on Shopify Plus.

In the long run, merchants that treat resilience as part of their marketing and revenue strategy—not just an IT issue—are likely to be better positioned the next time the internet wobbles.

FAQ: Shopify Cyber Monday Outage 2025

Was Shopify down on Cyber Monday 2025?
Yes. On December 1, Shopify suffered a multi‑hour outage affecting login, Admin, POS, mobile apps and parts of support, peaking around 11:00 a.m. ET with thousands of simultaneous complaints. ^[47]

How long was Shopify down for?
Most sources indicate a 5–6 hour window of severe disruption, with first reports around 9:00 a.m. ET and stable recovery by roughly 3:00 p.m. ET for the majority of merchants. ^[48]

Could customers still place orders while Shopify was down?
In most cases, yes. Shopify says storefronts and checkout remained online, but merchants could not log in to manage orders, inventory or promotions, and some in‑store POS systems failed. ^[49]

Is today’s (December 5) issue the same outage?
No. The Cyber Monday incident was caused by a Shopify authentication failure. Today’s problems stem from a separate Cloudflare outage that temporarily disrupted connectivity for many websites, including Shopify. ^[50]