How to Make Your Shopify Store Live: The Password Page

To make a Shopify store live, you switch off its password: Online Store > Preferences > Store access, turn off Private mode, and save. But Shopify's own launch guide lists three things before that: a paid plan, a store address, and a payment method with test mode off. We ran our real store through all of it on 24 September 2026 and asked Shopify's AI assistant, Sidekick, whether we were ready. It found the same blockers we did, and we stopped one click before launching. Here is every screen, and why we did not press the last button.

What we checked on our store

• Our store: Ridge & Oak Supply, on the paid Basic plan, with its own domain connected the same day (how we connected it). How we opened it is in how to start a Shopify store.
• What we did: found every place the password lives, looked at the store the way a visitor sees it, followed Shopify's launch checklist, and asked Sidekick for a readiness check.
• What we did not do: switch the store to public. Our store lists real products at real prices that we do not stock, and its payment setup is half finished. More on that below.

Where the password lives

Every new Shopify store starts private. On our store there were three places to change that:

1. Online Store > Preferences > Store access. The Private mode switch, described as "Displays a landing page that requires a password to enter your store", with the password underneath and an optional message to visitors. Turning it off makes the store public.
2. The Private button at the top of the Online Store page. It opens a preview of the password page and a Public / Private switch.
3. Launch store, on your theme's card on the same page, next to Edit theme.

Shopify's Help Center also names Settings > General as a place to make the store public ("Preparing your Shopify store for launch", read 24 September 2026). All of them do the same thing.

What visitors see while the store is private

We opened our own address as a visitor would. The page said Opening soon under the store name, with a line inviting people to sign up for the newsletter "to be the first to know when we launch", an email field, and two small links at the bottom: Enter using password, and a store-owner login.

That page is more useful than it looks. While you finish the store, anyone who finds it can leave an email, so you can launch to a short list instead of to nobody. If you share the password with a few customers, they can also see the full store before it is public.

Shopify's launch checklist

Shopify's Help Center lists what has to be in place before launch (read 24 September 2026):

• Select a subscription plan. During a free trial, "your online store is automatically in private mode". If you pick a plan during the trial, Shopify says you "won't be charged any subscription fees until your free trial expires".
• Add a store address in the Business details section of Settings > General.
• Set up a payment method, and make sure test mode is off.

It also recommends a test order before you open. Charges don't apply to test orders; without Shopify Payments you can use Shopify's test payment gateway, or a real provider and then cancel and refund the order.

Our admin said the same thing its own way. After we connected a domain, the home page read "You've claimed your domain. What do you want to work on next?" with three cards: Choose your store design, Set up payments and Review shipping rates.

We asked Sidekick if our store was ready

We typed: "Is my store ready to launch? List everything that would block my first sale, in order of importance." Sidekick checked Shopify's help docs and our store protection, domain, payments, shipping profiles and checkout settings, then answered "Not quite ready for a public first sale", in this order:

1. Confirmed blocker: the store is password-protected. Correct.
2. Critical check: confirm a live payment method. It said it "couldn't verify whether a payment provider is active", and told us to enable a real payment method and place a test order before removing the password.
3. Product blocker: one of our three products had zero stock and could not be bought, while the other two could.

It also listed what was already fine: SSL on our domain and active shipping rates. That is a useful five-minute check. Its one gap is the most important item: it could not see whether anyone can actually pay. So check payments yourself.

The payment gap on our store

Settings > Payments on our store showed exactly why Sidekick could not confirm payments:

• No payment provider. Just a Choose a provider button, with the note that "A 2% fee applies to payments processed through third-party providers". Shopify Payments is not offered to our Israel-registered store; we covered that in Shopify Payments: what it asks for.
• PayPal: Setup incomplete, with a prompt to finish the PayPal account "to start receiving payouts".
• No manual payment methods (such as bank transfer), which Shopify describes as payments made outside the store that must be approved before fulfilment.

That is how a finished-looking store can fail on launch day: the password comes off before anyone has tested how a customer pays.

Why we did not press Launch

Our store exists to test Shopify for these guides. Its products have real prices, but we do not ship them, and PayPal is half connected. Making it public could let a real person start a real checkout for something that will never arrive. So we stopped one click short. Every screen before that click is above.

That is also the honest rule for your own store: remove the password only when a stranger could buy something today and you could deliver it.

The launch-day checklist

Going public also matters beyond your own visitors: Shopify's requirements for showing products in AI shopping chats exclude stores in private mode. We tested those requirements in what Shopify requires before ChatGPT can sell your products.

Still on the free trial?

During a free trial Shopify keeps the store in private mode automatically, and its launch checklist starts with selecting a plan. Picking one during the trial does not charge you until the trial ends, so you can choose it the day the store is ready. For most people starting out that is Basic; is Shopify worth it has every plan price and when Grow pays for itself.

Verdict

Removing the password takes one switch. Being ready for it takes three things: a paid plan, a working payment method you have tested with an order, and stock in what you promote. Sidekick's readiness check is worth the five minutes, but it could not see our payment setup, so that check is yours to do by hand.