How do I get ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday traffic and support spikes?
BFCM is when merchants depend on your app most, and when an outage costs them the most.
- Our app slowed down last BFCM.
- Should we freeze releases?
- How do we handle support volume?
Load test against peak traffic, review API rate limit handling and webhook queues, and set a release freeze before the period. Prepare support with saved replies, extended hours and an escalation path. Tell merchants what to set up before the rush, such as campaigns and settings. Publish a status page. After BFCM, review what broke and what worked.
Checklist
| When | Task |
|---|---|
| 8 weeks before | Load tests, rate limit review |
| 6 weeks before | Merchant setup emails |
| 2 weeks before | Release freeze, support plan |
| During | Monitoring, status page, fast replies |
| After | Review and fixes |
Marketing
BFCM is also a moment to help merchants: guides, templates and campaign ideas built into your app or emails.
How we look at it at ShoutEx
We plan merchant communication and support, and our developers help with load and rate limit readiness.
- Releases during BFCM.
- No load testing.
- Support at normal hours.
- No status page.
- Load tested.
- Release freeze.
- Extended support.
- Merchant setup guides.
What developers and Shopify say
Here is what developers say.
Community summaries describe recurring themes in public threads, not individual posts. Vendor pages describe vendor claims, so test them on your own calls.
Read next
Go deeper in the ShoutEx guides, or check the sources behind this answer.
We'll plan communication, support and readiness.
Book a call →Follow-up questions
How long a freeze?
Through the peak weekend at minimum.
Should we offer BFCM features?
Ship them well before the freeze.
What about other peaks?
Use the same checklist for holiday and sales seasons.