How to Cancel a Shopify Subscription or Delete Your Store

How Do You Cancel a Shopify Subscription?

Three cases take a different path. To pause and not cancel, go to how to pause a store; on a free trial, to cancelling a free trial; on Shopify Plus, to Plus and several stores.

Cancel from the Shopify admin on a computer

These are Shopify's own steps for a store on any plan except Plus, as they read on October 12, 2026. You need to be logged in as the store owner. In our pre-cancel checklist this click is step seven of eight, after the exports, the apps and the domain.

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Plan.
2. Click Cancel plan if the store is on a paid plan, or Cancel trial if it is still in the free trial.
3. If applicable, review the options Shopify offers at this point: downgrading your subscription plan, switching to the Pause and build plan, or starting a new store.
4. Review your Shopify domains to avoid renewal fees, transfer a domain if needed, and review the pending charges. If you still want to deactivate, select Cancel my plan and uninstall all apps, and then click Continue.
5. Select a reason for the deactivation, add a comment if you want to, and click Continue.
6. Enter your password, and then click the confirmation button Shopify shows for your plan.

Before the password step Shopify offers an optional setting, Save payment details to reopen your store faster.

Step 4 of Shopify's list holds no surprise if you read the option's label: it says every app will be uninstalled. Shopify's page adds that you'll receive an email to confirm that your store is deactivated.

Can you cancel from the Shopify app on your phone?

Shopify's steps in the app are short:

1. Log in to the Shopify app as the store owner.
2. Open the menu, go to Settings and tap Plan.
3. If your store is on a paid plan, tap Cancel plan, then continue through the confirmation.

One detail is spelled out for the phone. Shopify says that when you use the Shopify app, the total outstanding balance displays before cancelation. That balance is charged after you cancel, so read it before you confirm.

Who can cancel — and can you do it without logging in?

Only the store owner can pause or deactivate the store, according to Shopify's permissions page, so this is not a task to hand to staff. A staff member with the Manage plan permission can authorize a plan change, an upgrade or a downgrade; the cancellation stays with the owner.

The login is a requirement, not a formality. Shopify's deactivation page says deactivating a store requires you to log in to your Shopify admin as the store owner and complete any required two-step authentication challenge. If you can't remember your email or password, the same page sends you to recover your Shopify login details first. What that recovery involves when the email itself is out of reach is in our FAQ on recovering a Shopify account without access to your email.

Shopify's help also rules out the other shortcut, asking Support to close the store for you by phone, chat or email:

Shopify's Terms of Service word it differently. Section 14, in the version dated August 1, 2026, says you may cancel your account "by contacting Shopify Support and then following the specific instructions indicated to you in Shopify's response." We read both pages on October 12, 2026, and they do not say the same thing.

What to do while they disagree: cancel in the admin yourself, as the owner. That path is documented step by step and waits on nobody's reply. Contact Support when the admin gives you no path of your own, which is the case on Shopify Plus.

All of this is about closing the store yourself. The opposite case, where Shopify restricts or terminates an account, is covered in our FAQ on whether Shopify can shut down your store.

When does the cancellation take effect?

Not on the day you click. Deactivating your store cancels your Shopify subscription at the end of your current billing cycle, and Shopify's billing page gives its own example:

Until that date the store is not yet deactivated, and Shopify lets you bring the plan back. If you canceled but haven't reached the end of your current billing cycle, you can reactivate your plan before the store is deactivated. The section of Shopify's deactivation page on reactivating a plan lists two steps on a computer and does not mention the apps uninstalled at cancellation.

When the date arrives, your access goes with it: Shopify's billing page says a deactivated store loses access to the Shopify admin at the end of the current billing cycle. Finish everything that needs the admin before the cycle ends.

Shopify Plus and accounts with several stores

The steps above are for stores on plans other than Plus. For Plus, Shopify's deactivation page says to contact Shopify Plus Support and, in its list of financial obligations, a Merchant Success Specialist; its billing page names only the Merchant Success Specialist. Both names stood in Shopify's help on October 12, 2026; start with Plus Support and ask who handles your account.

If you own several stores, remember that one Shopify account connects every store and organization you own or have a user account on. Shopify's cancellation steps start from a store's own admin, so open the admin of the store you mean to close before you go to Settings > Plan. Shopify also lists your other stores among the reasons invoices can keep arriving after one store is deactivated.

What Should You Do Before You Cancel?

Two things that shape your prep happen at the end of the billing cycle: you lose access to the admin, and your custom domains are disconnected from the store. Apps follow a different clock: Shopify's steps say all apps are automatically uninstalled at cancellation and your pending charges are charged, and its app-charges page says outstanding app amounts are charged immediately when you cancel your subscription. Anything that needs the admin, whether an export or a domain transfer, is simpler before the cycle ends than afterwards.

If you are moving to another platform and not closing down, the cancel click is the last step of the move, after the data and the domain. Our Shopify-to-Wix guide walks through closing Shopify last and what happens when you do.

Export the data Shopify lets you export

Shopify's deactivation page tells you to export CSV files to save your store information, and its backup page lists what a CSV export covers:

• Products
• Customers
• Orders
• Gift card codes
• Discount codes
• Financial data

Blog posts and online store pages are not on that list. The same backup page handles them in one line, telling you to copy and paste your blog posts and online store pages, and the ways to get them out in bulk are in our FAQ on getting blog posts, pages and menus out of Shopify.

A paid theme's license stays with this store unless you ask to move it: Shopify says themes are licensed only to the store you originally buy them for, and that you can contact Shopify Support to transfer the license to another Shopify store you own.

One record you do not have to rush is the bill history. Shopify says that after your store is deactivated at the end of your current billing cycle, you can view your Shopify bills without reactivating it. How long your own tax law makes you keep those records is a separate question; for a store in Germany we cover it in how long Shopify store records have to be kept.

Cancel the app charges Shopify will not cancel for you

Apps billed through Shopify take care of themselves. Shopify's cancellation steps say all apps are automatically uninstalled at cancellation and your pending charges are charged.

Apps that bill you directly are the ones to chase. Shopify's app-charges page says to cancel any external app subscriptions and uninstall apps before deactivating your store to avoid continued charges, and its billing page repeats the advice for apps charged outside Shopify billing. Which amounts land on the last bill and which keep running is the subject of our FAQ on pending app charges when you deactivate.

What happens to your domain — and how do you keep it?

Your domain is a separate item from your subscription. Shopify's deactivation page says domain renewals aren't canceled when you cancel your store, and that custom domains become disconnected from the store when it is deactivated or frozen. The same page adds that if your domain renews after you've deactivated your store and before the end of the billing cycle when the store closes, you might be charged for the renewal. Section 14 of Shopify's Terms of Service, in the version dated August 1, 2026, reads differently: if you purchased a domain name through Shopify, upon cancellation your domain will no longer be automatically renewed. Neither text explains how it fits with the other, so check the domain's renewal setting yourself. On the domain itself one trace stays behind: Shopify's HSTS policy remains in effect on your domain for 90 days after you deactivate your store.

What you do next depends on where the domain was bought and whether you want it afterwards. Two limits are worth knowing before you open the table: a .com, .net or .org domain isn't eligible for transfer until 60 days after certain actions listed on Shopify's transfer page, and on a .de or .at domain the yearly auto-renew setting is always on and can't be switched off from the admin, according to Shopify's renewal page.

Two Shopify help pages disagree on a related point: whether a Shopify-managed domain can still be moved once the store is no longer active. The frozen-store page says a frozen store has to be reactivated before you can take actions such as transferring a domain.

The domain-transfer page says you can transfer your domain when your store is paused, deactivated or frozen, without paying an outstanding invoice first, by opening a limited version of the Domains page. We read both on October 12, 2026.

What to do while these two pages disagree: transfer the domain while the store is still active, and the question never reaches you. If the store is already deactivated or frozen, look for the limited Domains page first, and reactivate only if it isn't there. The mechanics of the move, the domain's renewal and the HSTS tail are laid out in our domains guide, under what happens to your domain when you leave Shopify.

Gift cards, Capital, Credit, Balance and POS Pro

For gift cards the open question is money you have already taken. What a card sold but not yet redeemed means for your books is covered in our gift card guide, under what you owe on every card sold.

Financing has one more documented knot. If you were using Shopify Payments when you received Shopify Capital funding, Shopify says you can't deactivate Shopify Payments until the total amount owed is fully repaid. Ask Shopify how that applies to your account before you cancel.

Closing a Shopify Credit account is a procedure of its own, which we cover in what closing Shopify Credit involves.

The pre-cancel checklist

Steps 2 to 6 of this checklist are worth finishing before you open the cancel path. Shopify's own cancel steps put two reviews ahead of the cancel option itself: you review your Shopify domains and your pending charges before you select Cancel my plan and uninstall all apps, and the pending charges are charged at cancellation. If you have already cancelled, Shopify's deactivation page still lists exporting your store data among the things to consider before your current billing cycle ends and your store is deactivated. A domain renewal and an app's billing date keep their own clock and can fall due before the cycle ends.

What Happens After You Cancel?

Cancelling starts several clocks at once, and they do not run for the same length. Two of them decide most plans: you can reactivate your store up to 2 years after deactivating it, and if you deactivate, any credits on your account remain available for 60 days.

Treat the two-year mark as the end of what is promised, and export anything you need to keep longer.

Can you reactivate a cancelled Shopify store?

Yes, within the two-year window. After you log in as the store owner, Shopify's steps continue with a Re-open button that carries the store's myshopify.com address, then selecting a plan, entering payment information and clicking Subscribe; its billing page sets one condition first: before you can reactivate, all outstanding charges have to be paid.

Two details matter on the way back. If you reactivate in the middle of a billing cycle that hasn't ended yet, you won't be charged again for reactivating, which Shopify says of monthly and annual plans alike. And the domain does not return by itself: you reconnect it under Settings > Domains > Connect existing domain.

The window closes early once the store's data is deleted: after that, the store can't be reactivated at all, which is why deleting the store's data is a separate decision.

Which bills can still arrive?

It depends on what was open when you cancelled. Shopify's billing page says that if no outstanding charges are found, no final invoice is issued upon deactivation. If there are, any outstanding balance on your account is charged after cancellation, and Shopify's Terms of Service add that fees owed at the date of termination arrive as one final invoice by email.

After that, Shopify lists three reasons an invoice can still reach you:

• Third-party charges
• Chargebacks
• Other stores you own

Payouts and chargebacks after the store closes

Money already on its way keeps moving. Shopify says that even if you deactivate your store, any pending payments from Shopify Payments will continue to be processed.

The catch is a payout that fails: in such cases, reactivating your store is necessary to troubleshoot or modify payout settings. When payouts land and what can delay them is in our guide to Shopify payouts.

Chargebacks do not stop at the door either. Shopify's deactivation page says chargebacks can be filed against previous transactions even after you deactivate, and its billing page says you would need to reactivate your store to gain the admin access needed to submit your defense.

With recent orders that changes the right day to close; our FAQ covers when to deactivate a store with recent orders.

Pause, Downgrade or Hand the Store Over Instead

Cancelling is one of four exits, and Shopify shows two of the others on the cancel path itself: where applicable, step three of the cancellation offers a downgrade or the Pause and build plan, next to starting a new store. Who may use each exit, and under what conditions, differs more than the price does. Pausing costs $9 USD a month and is open to the store owner only; a downgrade can also be authorized by staff with the Manage plan permission.

Between a pause and a cancellation, the test is whether you will use the store while you are away. A paused store keeps its admin, its visible storefront and its installed apps, with their charges, running for the monthly fee; a deactivated store has no admin access, no installed apps and no subscription, and Shopify lets you reactivate it for up to 2 years, as long as its data has not been deleted.

What does Pause and Build keep running, and what does it switch off?

The price is easy to miss, because Shopify's pause page and billing page call it only a reduced fee. The number is on its page about closing for vacations: selecting the Pause and Build plan changes your subscription fee to $9 USD per month. That figure is in US dollars; we did not check local-currency prices.

To select the plan, your store has to meet these requirements:

• You must be the store owner.
• Your store needs to be past the free trial period.
• Your store needs to be on a paid plan.

Stores and organizations on the Shopify Plus plan are excluded outright. If your store meets all requirements but the option still isn't displayed, Shopify says to contact Shopify Support.

Shopify's page on billing extensions adds one more condition: to switch to the Pause and Build plan, all outstanding invoices must be paid first.

What you get for the fee is an open admin and a storefront customers can look at but not buy from: checkout is deactivated across all sales channels.

Draft orders are the half-case: you can send draft order invoices, but the order can't be completed through the checkout or your Shopify admin.

Apps are the cost that survives the pause. All your apps remain active after you pause your store, so Shopify suggests uninstalling any third-party apps that have recurring charges. If you were charged for an app subscription after pausing, the app's billing cycle might have renewed before you uninstalled it.

How long can a store stay paused? As of October 12, 2026, none of the pages we read — Shopify's help pages on pausing a store, closing for vacations, deactivating a store, billing when you pause or deactivate and pricing plans, plus its public pricing page — states a minimum or a maximum length for Pause and Build.

How do you pause a Shopify store?

The pause sits behind the cancel button. Shopify's steps on a computer:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Plan.
2. Click Cancel plan.
3. Enter your password when prompted.
4. Click Cancel plan again to view all available options.
5. Select the Pause and build plan.
6. Carefully review the plan details, and then click Switch to Pause and build.

In the Shopify app the last step is the same button: tap Switch to Pause and build. The part that is easy to overlook is the date, because the switch is scheduled and not immediate:

Until the change takes effect, customers can still place orders. To stop new orders before the Pause and Build plan takes effect, Shopify says to activate private mode on your online store.

Shopify's page on closing for vacations is less firm than the pause page on one point: it says the change might be scheduled to take effect at the end of your current billing cycle. Both pages say the Shopify admin might display a future effective date, so look for that date in the admin after you switch.

Closing for a few days: private mode, not a plan change

For a short break, private mode alone may be all you need, and a new store starts in it by default. Know what it leaves running: Shopify says that when you restrict access to your store, your subscription charges and any other recurring charges continue as expected. Where that switch lives is covered in our FAQ on the password page and private mode.

Coming back from a pause

Unpausing is a new subscription, not a resume. Shopify says you'll need to select a new plan because your old plan is no longer valid: you log in and subscribe to a new plan under Settings > Plan, which starts a new billing cycle and charges the remaining amount after any credits on your account are applied. That matters most on a plan closed to new stores; see why pausing a Starter store is also an exit.

Downgrading instead of leaving

If the store still sells and the bill is the problem, a lower plan is the smaller move. Shopify's plan-change page says your plan is pre-paid, so any change to a lower plan takes effect at the end of your current billing cycle, and that the store owner or a staff member with the Manage plan permission must authorize the change.

Shopify's refund policy describes the move in different words: when you downgrade your plan mid-cycle, you receive account credits applied to future invoices instead of a refund. Either way the practical rule is modest: treat a downgrade as a way to pay less from the next cycle, not as a way to get cash back.

How Shopify counts cycles and prorates plan changes is laid out in our billing guide, under upgrade and downgrade math.

Selling the store or transferring ownership

The sale is yours to arrange. Shopify's ownership page says store owners must conduct all sales of their stores independently, separately from the Shopify platform, and that the fees third-party marketplaces charge aren't set, controlled or collected by Shopify. What Shopify provides, on plans other than Plus, is the change of ownership itself, and only the store owner can start it.

Three conditions decide whether the transfer can happen, according to Shopify's ownership page:

• If you're using Shopify Capital or Shopify Credit, you will be unable to transfer your store.
• With an active Shopify Balance, you must empty the Balance account and contact Shopify Support.
• A custom domain you purchased has to be transferred to the new owner as well.

What else stays behind is in our FAQ on selling a Shopify store.

Which Exit Is Actually Open to You?

The Quick Verdict table at the top answers by what you want. This answers by combination: what you want, crossed with where the store is on billing, your role on it and whether it uses Shopify's financing products — the conditions that open or close each exit. Five questions return one route and its first moves.

Can You Delete a Shopify Store Permanently?

For a merchant's store, "delete" can mean four different things, each with its own route:

On a plan other than Shopify Plus, removing a store from an organization is a route that can be mistaken for a delete: it takes away the store's billing payment method and does not close the store.

Searches for "delete Shopify store" expect a button. As of October 12, 2026, none of the pages we read — Shopify's help pages on deactivating a store, pausing it, the billing side of both, deleting data, transferring ownership and removing a store from an organization, plus its public pricing page — describes a self-service Delete store or Reset store button for a merchant's store. What they describe are the routes in the table above.

You may still have seen a button with that name: the Settings > Plan page of our own development store shows a Delete store button. Development stores are a separate case, and Shopify's developer documentation says deleting a dev store is permanent.

Zoom

Deleting the store's data for good

The order is fixed: data can only be deleted from a deactivated store, so you cancel first and ask second. What you request, in the words of Shopify's billing page, is the deletion of the personal data of your customers from your deactivated store; only the store owner can request it, and the request goes to Shopify Support. Shopify is blunt about what follows:

If you own more than one store, the request is not account-wide: deleting data applies to only the store you request to be deleted. And it ends the two-year safety net, because after your store data is deleted, the store can't be reactivated.

Shopify says data is deleted within 14 days after a request is completed; if you change your mind, you must contact Shopify Support again before 14 days have passed to stop the deletion.

Erasing your own account data

Your own personal data is handled separately from the store's. Shopify's privacy page says your merchant personal data can only be erased after you've deactivated all stores and all accounts that are associated with your email address. Then you go to the Shopify Privacy controls and click Erase my data.

Shopify says it might take up to 30 days to process that erasure request, that erasure may be subject to exceptions and limitations provided by applicable law, and that once your personal data is erased it isn't recoverable.

Starting over with a clean store

People who ask for a delete button often want a blank slate. The pages we read on October 12, 2026 — the same set named earlier in this section — do not explain what the "start a new store" option on the cancel screen does with the old store.

What Shopify does state is that you can't use the same myshopify.com domain to create a new store, so a fresh start comes with a new address. You can start a new store from Shopify's sign-up page.

A paid theme stays licensed to the old store unless you ask for a transfer: Shopify says you can contact Shopify Support to transfer the license to another Shopify store you own. What it documents for a paid theme when you move stores is in our FAQ on refunds for paid themes, under the one refund Shopify documents.

Trials, Unpaid Bills and Refunds

Three money questions decide how most exits actually go: whether a trial needs cancelling at all, whether leaving cancels what you owe, and whether any of the plan fee comes back.

Do you need to cancel a Shopify free trial?

It depends on one thing: whether you picked a plan. Shopify's deactivation page says that if you choose to end your Shopify account within the free trial period without opting for a paid plan, no additional actions are required. If you selected a paid plan before the trial concluded, you must manually pause or deactivate your store to cancel your account and prevent being charged the fee for your chosen plan.

Shopify's free-trial page gives the same instruction for a store with a plan picked. Both pages name pausing, yet Shopify's pause page lists being past the free trial period among the requirements for Pause and Build, and the free-trial page's own troubleshooting entry on canceling during the trial names only deactivating. On a trial store the button in Settings > Plan reads Cancel trial.

One more rule applies to discounted starts: if you deactivate during a promotional pricing period, you aren't entitled to a refund for any charges incurred during that period.

What happens to the store itself when a trial simply runs out is covered in our trial billing guide, under what happens when the trial ends and you do nothing.

Can you cancel without paying what you owe?

Leaving is not a way out of a bill: any outstanding balance on your account is charged after cancellation, and the final invoice that follows is described under which bills can still arrive.

If you owe anything when you cancel, Shopify's billing-extensions page adds the order of events: your store automatically deactivates at the end of your current billing cycle after payment is successfully received for any outstanding amounts.

Simply not paying leads somewhere else. The plain-language summary of section 5 of Shopify's Terms says that if payment of fees is unsuccessful within 28 days of the initial attempt to process payment, Shopify may freeze your store; clause 4 of that section words it as suspending and revoking access to your account and the services.

Shopify's billing-extensions page puts it more firmly than the Terms: the store becomes frozen if a subscription invoice is still unpaid after 28 days from the first failed attempt; what follows the freeze is in our FAQ on how long you have and what still works.

If the store is already frozen and you don't want to reactivate it, Shopify's frozen-store page says no action is required. If you do come back more than 30 days after your last bill was issued, you also need to pick a plan and pay for the upcoming subscription cycle.

A freeze reaches the domain too: custom domains become disconnected from a frozen store just as from a deactivated one. Who keeps paying the renewal meanwhile is covered in our FAQ on a frozen store's domain, under who switches the renewal off and who pays.

Do you get a refund when you cancel?

Generally not. Shopify plans are generally non-refundable, and the refund policy is specific about leaving: if you cancel your Shopify plan, no refunds are issued for any remaining period post-cancellation. Shopify's Terms of Service say the same of termination: no refunds of any fees, pro rata or otherwise, unless the Terms provide otherwise.

What exists is a review. To be eligible, your cancellation or request must fall within a time window counted from the invoice issue date: 7 days on a monthly subscription, 30 days on an annual one, and three more in the table.

Two limits keep that realistic. Shopify says meeting these time windows doesn't guarantee a refund, and that Shopify Support reviews eligible requests on a case-by-case basis.

On an annual plan, an alternative to cancelling is moving to monthly billing; our FAQ covers what happens to the annual fee you already paid.

The Bottom Line

Leaving Shopify is a short procedure with a long tail. The click takes a minute; deactivation follows at the end of the billing cycle.

Frequently Asked Questions