Publishing your store
Switch your store from draft to live so customers can buy. Drafts are useful for previewing the storefront before going public — only published stores are reachable to anyone outside your team.
Publishing your store
Your store has two main states: draft and published. Customers can only browse and buy from a published store; while you're in draft, the store is private to you and your team.
The two states
| State | What customers see | What your team sees |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | "Page not found" | The full storefront |
| Published | The full storefront | The full storefront |
There's also a "suspended" state used very rarely by Zillo support in unusual cases. You won't run into it day-to-day.
Switch from draft to published
- Publish at least one product. A store with zero published products renders an empty catalogue, which isn't a great first impression. Open Products, pick a product, and switch its status to Published.
- Make sure Stripe is connected. Visit Settings → Payments and confirm you see "Connected". Without this, checkout fails.
- Open the publish toggle in the dashboard sidebar header (or from Settings → Storefront).
- Flip the status to Published. Your store is now live.
The change takes effect immediately. Search engines pick up your URL within a few hours via the platform's sitemap.
Previewing a draft
While you're in draft, you and any team member can visit the storefront URL and see the full site. Anyone not on your team gets a "Page not found" page.
Open a private/incognito browser window to see exactly what an anonymous visitor would see.
Use Test mode to simulate real checkouts on your draft store. Enable it from Settings → Payments. Test mode lets you click through the entire customer experience — checkout, payment, fulfillment email — without needing a fully verified Stripe account.
Common issues
"My customer says they can't access my store" — most likely your store is still in draft. Either publish it, or add your customer as a team member from Settings → Team so they can preview.
"Products aren't showing on the storefront" — products have their own publish state. A product set to "draft" stays hidden even when the store is published. Check each product's status from Products.