Demo site mode is a setting for a specific situation: you are building a store not for yourself but to hand over or sell to someone else. It lets you build out a complete, working-looking shop — products, pages, the lot — without any risk of taking a real payment before the new owner is ready. This guide explains what it does and how to use it.
What demo site mode is for
Sometimes a store is built as a product in its own right — you set it up, fill it with example products, style it, and then sell or hand it to a client who will run it. During that build-and-sell phase you do not want the checkout taking live card payments, because the store is not really trading yet and the payment account is not the new owner's. Demo site mode covers exactly this gap, keeping the store fully presentable while payments stay switched off.
What it does
When demo site mode is enabled, your store blocks all card payments at checkout. This happens regardless of whether any Stripe keys have been entered — demo mode always wins, so there is no chance of a stray test or live key letting a real charge through. Everything else about the store keeps working normally: products display, the cart functions, pages and the blog look exactly as they will in production, and you can demonstrate the full experience to a prospective buyer. Only the final step of actually charging a card is disabled. Conversion features that depend on payment, such as the one-time offer, simply step aside while demo mode is on.
How to turn it on
You enable it in your Shop settings, with the Demo Site Mode toggle. Switch it on while you are building the store for sale, and leave it on right up until the new owner takes over. Because it overrides the payment keys, you can even add Stripe keys for testing and still be certain no real payment can occur while demo mode is active.
Handing the store over
When the store is sold and the new owner is ready to start trading, going live is a two-part switch. The new owner adds their own Stripe keys in the shop settings — their account, not yours — and then turns Demo Site Mode off. From that moment the checkout is live and payments flow to the new owner's Stripe account. It is worth walking a buyer through these two steps as part of the handover, and reminding them not to turn demo mode off until their own Stripe account is connected, so the first live payment can only ever land in the right place.
A quick summary
Use demo site mode whenever you are building a store to sell rather than to run yourself. It keeps the shop fully demonstrable while guaranteeing no real payment is taken, and the new owner switches it off — after adding their own Stripe keys — when they are ready to go live.