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Closing your store for maintenance

You can temporarily close your Ecwid store to visitors if it is under construction, you’re having a vacation, or you currently can't accept orders for any other reason. After you close your storefront, customers won’t be able to view your catalog and place orders, and they will see a special “The store is closed for maintenance” notice instead of products on the store front page.

To open and close your storefront based on a specific schedule, use the We’re Closed app from Ecwid App Market. The app can optionally allow customers to browse your catalog without placing orders (the "Add to Bag" buttons will be hidden).

If you’re on a paid plan, closing the storefront from customers will not affect your subscription. The paid plan remains active, and you are still being charged for it. Learn about the special suspension plan that you can use →

Temporarily closing storefront to visitors

No matter which platform you use with your Ecwid store, you can stop visitors from accessing your storefront by enabling the maintenance mode.

After you close the storefront to visitors, you can still access your store admin and view and edit the catalog and all the other settings, including previously placed orders.

To close your storefront to visitors:

  1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Settings → General → Store Profile.
  2. Click Close Storefront for Maintenance:

    Closing_store_to_visitors__3_.png

That’s it! You’ve closed your storefront to all the visitors.

Now neither you nor your customers will be able to view products and place orders, and customers won’t be able to access their accounts. On the store front page, "The store is closed for maintenance" message will appear:

Closing_store_to_visitors__4_.png

In case you’re using Instant Site with your store, the store blocks will simply be hidden from the front page, and no additional message will appear.

You can keep the storefront open to chosen visitors (for example, you want to preview the store before opening it to the general public) as well as replace "The store is closed for maintenance" with your own custom message.

Keeping storefront open to chosen visitors

After you close your storefront to the general public, you can still keep it open to some visitors like yourself and your staff and/or specific customers. For example, you can keep the store open to yourself, so if you make design changes or update the catalog, you can check the result live in the store.

To open storefront to chosen visitors:

  1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Settings → General → Store Profile.
  2. Add the IP addresses of those who can view your store into the Remain open for IPs text box. If there are several IP addresses, separate them by a comma.

    Closing_store_to_visitors__2_.png

You can have the storefront closed and reopened automatically at a certain time with the help of a custom script based on the Ecwid API. If you need help with programming this script, our Customization team can develop this feature for you on a paid basis.

Changing the "Store is closed for maintenance" notice

You can edit the default "The store is closed for maintenance" text with the help of a CSS code. For example, you can give more details in this notice about why you are closed and when the store will be back online. Replace the We will reopen soon text in the code with your custom message:


/* Change the text of the closed storefront label */
span.ecwid-maintenance-message {
font-size: 0;
}
span.ecwid-maintenance-message:after { content: 'We will reopen soon';
font-size: 30px;
}

Learn how to add CSS codes to your store →

Opening storefront back to visitors

Once you are ready to accept orders, you can open the storefront back so that it is available to any site visitor again.

To open your storefront to visitors:

  1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Settings → General → Store Profile.
  2. Click Open Storefront:

    Closing_store_to_visitors__1_.png

That’s it! Now your storefront is open to everyone.

If you’re using Instant Site, the store blocks will be visible to customers again.

Other ways to temporarily stop taking orders

Closing your storefront is a quick and easy way to hide your catalog and inform customers of the reasons. You can use other ways to temporarily stop taking orders if they suit your needs better:

  • If you’re using the original version of our Instant Site, you can disable the Store block to make the store section completely invisible on your site (e.g., if you want to keep a promo site for your business). For that, go Website → Edit SiteStore and turn off the Show section toggle.
  • If you want to leave the products visible without the checkout option, you can turn your store into a catalog. This way, you will allow customers to browse your products without taking orders. Once you’re ready to sell again, just change the settings back.
  • If you want to block your customers from choosing particular dates for order pickup (e.g., on holidays when you don’t work), you can set blackout dates.
  • If you want customers to continue buying from you and inform them that the orders will be processed with a delay, you can add a banner or a popup with that warning to your store.

Related articles

Pausing, downgrading or closing your Ecwid store
How to collect quote requests in your store
Guide to Ecwid Instant Site
Creating site redirects

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