# Close your store with an opening-soon page > Sold out, or not open yet? Replace your whole store with one page that shows your logo, your message and an email box, so shoppers can ask to be told when you reopen. Guide: https://sitesplaced.com/help/online-stores/close-store-opening-soon · Section: Online Stores · Last reviewed: 2026-09-30 ## What it is **Close the store** is one checkbox that takes your whole store down to a single page. Shoppers who open any link to your store — the home page, a product, the cart, anything — see the same page: your logo (or your store name), a heading, a message from you, an email box and your social links. Nothing else of the store shows and nobody can place an order. When you untick the box, the whole store comes back exactly as it was. Use it when you have sold out and will make more, when you take prebookings in batches, when you are launching and want a place to collect emails before the shop opens, or when you are closing for longer than a short holiday and would rather shoppers left their email than saw empty shelves. > **On every plan:** Closing the store is not a paid feature. Free, Starter, Growth and AI Co-founder stores can all use it, and the emails it collects are yours to keep. ## Close your store 1. Open your store dashboard and go to **Settings**. 2. Open the **Checkout** section, or type “close store” into the **Search settings…** box at the top. **Close the store** is the second card, right under **Pause ordering**. 3. Tick **Close my store and show an opening-soon page**. The row turns amber and the boxes for the page appear. 4. Write your **Heading** (up to 80 characters) and your **Message** (up to 400). If you leave them empty the page reads “Opening soon” and “We've sold out for now. Leave your email and we'll let you know the moment prebooking opens.” 5. Leave **Collect emails on the page** ticked to show the email box. You can change the **Button text** (“Notify me”) and the line shoppers read **after they sign up**. 6. Press **Save** in the bar at the bottom of the page. The block on new orders applies the moment you save. The page itself reaches your home, products and cart pages within a few minutes. Individual product pages are stored for speed and can take up to an hour to switch over. Nobody can order in the meantime either way, because the check happens on our server when an order is priced. ## What shoppers see - **One page, on every link.** Whether they open your store link, a product link you shared last month, or a link from Google, they land on the opening-soon page. It uses your brand colour and brand font from **Settings → Branding**, so it looks like your store. - **Your logo or your name.** The logo you uploaded under **Settings → Branding** sits at the top. If you have no logo, your store name is shown instead. - **Your heading and message.** Exactly what you typed, or the default wording if you typed nothing. - **The email box.** One field and a button. When a shopper leaves their email they see your thank-you line, and the email appears in your **Subscribers** tab straight away, marked as coming from the closed page. - **Your social links.** The links you set under **Settings → Navigation & menu → Social links** are listed at the bottom, so shoppers can follow you while they wait. If you have none set, that row is simply left out. - **On the free plan, the SitesPlaced badge.** The same small badge that sits on every page of a free-plan store sits on this page too. ## What is blocked Every way of placing an order is closed: Direct Order, WhatsApp checkout, Cash on Delivery, bank transfer, online payment through any gateway, 1-click checkout, and orders sent through the API or an AI tool connected to your store. Shoppers cannot reach the cart or a product page at all, and a shopper who still had the cart open in another tab from before you closed gets your message instead of an order when they press the button. > **One exception: a shopper who has already paid:** If someone opened the Razorpay payment window a moment before you closed and then completes the payment, that order **is** recorded. Turning them away would take their money and leave you with no record of it. After you close, look at your **Orders** tab once in case a last order came through. ## The emails you collect Every email left on the opening-soon page goes to your **Subscribers** tab, the same place as emails from a newsletter section or from the [email signup strip](https://sitesplaced.com/help/md/online-stores/email-list.md). From there you can export the whole list as a file, or email everyone on it, so the day you reopen you can tell exactly the people who asked. Emails are checked for a real format before they are saved, and one address is only saved once. ## Close the store, or pause ordering? The two switches sit next to each other in **Settings → Checkout** and both stop orders. The difference is what shoppers can still see. - **Pause ordering** keeps the whole store up — products, prices, pages — and only closes the checkout. Choose it for a holiday or a stock count, when you want shoppers to keep browsing and to come back. It is explained in [Pause ordering on your store](https://sitesplaced.com/help/md/online-stores/pause-ordering.md). - **Close the store** hides everything behind one page and collects emails. Choose it when there is nothing to browse — you have sold out, you have not launched, or you are away for long enough that a shop full of things nobody can buy would do more harm than good. - If both are ticked, the opening-soon page wins, because there is no cart left to show the paused message in. ## Reopen your store Go back to **Settings → Checkout**, untick **Close my store and show an opening-soon page** and press **Save**. Your store comes back exactly as it was: every page, every product, your announcement bar, all of it. The heading and message you wrote are kept, ready for the next time. Then go to your **Subscribers** tab and email the people who asked to be told. That list is the whole point of closing the store this way rather than just unpublishing it. **Q: Is this the same as unpublishing my store?** No. An unpublished store cannot be opened at all, and links to it stop working. A closed store still answers every link with your page and your email box, and Google still sees a live site at your address. Closing is the better choice whenever you plan to come back. **Q: Can I keep one product on sale while the rest is closed?** No. Closing the store hides everything. To stop selling most things but keep a few, leave the store open and set the stock of the others to zero or archive them from the Products tab. **Q: Can I set a date for the store to reopen by itself?** No. There is no timer. Write the date in your message so shoppers know, and untick the box yourself on the day. **Q: Can I hide the email box?** Yes. Untick **Collect emails on the page**. The page then shows only your logo, heading, message and social links. **Q: Where do the emails go?** To the **Subscribers** tab of your store dashboard, marked as coming from the closed page. You can export them or email them from there. **Q: Does my store's feed for Google Shopping or Meta still work?** Yes. The product feed files keep working while the store is closed, so your catalogue listings do not break. Shoppers who click through from an ad see the opening-soon page.