Hide your store before launch
Before launch you need two contradictory things: nobody can see the store, and a specific handful of people can.
Prime Lock locks the storefront, hands out per-person secret links, and opens everything on a date you set once.
The problem
Shopify's store password does this, it is free, and it is genuinely good. If all you need is a closed door with one shared password, use it and skip this page: we would rather you did than pay us for something you already have.
It stops working when the requirements get slightly more real. The password is one shared string, so you cannot tell who looked or revoke one person's access. It covers the entire storefront, so you cannot keep a landing page or a waitlist form live while the catalog stays hidden. It has no schedule, so launch day involves someone logging in to switch it off. And every stakeholder gets the same splash screen before the site, which is a poor thing to send an investor.
The workaround (build on a development store, then migrate) costs you a data migration, your theme settings, and usually your metafields, right when you can least afford the risk.
How Prime Lock does it
Treat the pre-launch state as a lock like any other, with an expiry date on it.
- 1
Lock type → Lock content
The whole page is withheld rather than just the price. Nothing about the catalog reaches the browser.
- 2
Applies to → Entire store, or only the collections in progress
Scope it down if you want a landing page, an about page or a waitlist form to stay live and indexable while the products stay hidden.
- 3
Who can unlock → No one
No tag, no customer group. Access comes exclusively from the secret links you issue, which is what makes it revocable.
- 4
Also allow a secret link → On: one per stakeholder (Pro)
Issue a separate link to the founder, the investor, the photographer and the agency. Each has its own expiry and usage cap, and you can kill one without disturbing the others.
- 5
Schedule → Date window with a start date
Set launch day and time. The store opens itself, in your store's timezone, whether or not anyone is at a laptop.
- 6
Storefront behavior → Show custom message, or Return 404
A custom message with a waitlist form is right when you are building in public. Return 404 is right when the store's existence is itself confidential; a crawler that gets a 404 has nothing to index and nothing to cache.
What the customer sees
What a visitor gets before launch day, and what the same URL becomes once the date window opens.
Signature Carryall · Olive
Aspedan Supply · SKU BCT-24
Launching 14 March
The product page is still indexable by Google, only the price is withheld.
Why enforcement matters here
Pre-launch is the scenario where a leak is permanent: prices screenshot before you finalise them, an unfinished product page cached by Google, a competitor with your full range a month early. A theme-level hide leaves every product resolvable by handle and every price readable at `/products/handle.js`, and a cart permalink built from a variant ID will happily check out an order you did not intend to accept before you have opened.
Prime Lock withholds the content server-side and the Function refuses the order, so a guessed handle returns your holding message or a 404 rather than a product, and an early cart cannot become an early order. On launch day the date window expires and everything is simply live: no switch to flip, no password to remember to remove.
Be honest about the free option
If your pre-launch needs are “nobody sees anything until we are ready”, Shopify's built-in store password is the correct tool and costs nothing. Use Prime Lock when you need part of the store live while the rest is hidden, a launch that happens on a timer, per-stakeholder links you can revoke individually, or a 404 instead of a splash page.
Decide who gets to see your store.
Early access opens with the free plan. Unlimited locks, enforced at checkout.
No newsletter. One email when Prime Lock is live.