How to hide products from customers
You can temporarily or permanently hide products from customers without deleting them from your store. The steps depend on your ecommerce platform and whether you want to prevent new purchases or discontinue the product entirely.
This guide explains how to hide products while preserving existing subscriptions.
Before you start
Hiding a product only prevents new customers from purchasing it. Existing subscribers remain subscribed and continue receiving the product until you update or discontinue their subscriptions.
If you no longer want existing subscribers to receive the product, see Discontinuing products for existing subscribers.
Shopify Checkout Integration
Shopify lets you control product availability using product status and sales channels.
Option 1 - Remove the product from sales channels
Removing a product from all sales channels makes it unavailable for purchase while keeping the product in Shopify.
Option 2 - Change the product status
Choose the status that best matches how you want to manage the product.
Status |
Behavior |
|---|---|
| Active | The product is available in all assigned sales channels. |
| Draft | The product is hidden from customers. Merchants commonly use this status while preparing products before launch. |
| Archived | The product is hidden from customers and archived in the Shopify admin. You can restore the product later by unarchiving it. |
| Unavailable | The product remains Active but isn't assigned to any sales channels, so customers can't purchase it. |
BigCommerce Integration or Recharge Checkout on BigCommerce
BigCommerce provides separate controls for product visibility and purchasability.
Option 1 - Disable purchasability
Adjust the product's Purchasability setting to prevent customers from purchasing the product while optionally keeping it visible on your storefront.
See Setting product purchasability in the BigCommerce documentation for more information.
Option 2 - Hide the product
Disable the product's Visibility to remove it from:
- Category pages
- Search results
- Featured product panels
- The product details page
Customers attempting to access the product page receive a 404 response unless you've configured a redirect.
See Toggling product visibility in the BigCommerce documentation for more information.
Expected outcome
After hiding a product:
- New customers can't purchase the product.
- Existing subscribers continue receiving the product according to their current subscriptions.
- You can restore product availability later by updating the product status or visibility settings.
