Campaign status: Live, Scheduled and Draft (Essential Preorder app)

This article explains the three states a preorder campaign can be in, how to schedule a campaign to start and stop by itself, and what happens to your products when a campaign stops. It is for shop owners planning a launch or a limited preorder window.

Where to set it

Open the preorder campaign, Content tab, section Status, scheduling. Pick one:

• Live: “Go LIVE to your store. Customers can buy.” The button shows as soon as you save.
• Scheduled: “Set start and end dates. Customers can buy during that time.” Needs the Lite plan or higher.
• Draft: “Save a draft campaign. Customers cannot buy.” Everything is kept, nothing shows on the store.

The campaign list on Home shows the state as a badge: Live, Scheduled or Draft.

Scheduling

1. Choose Scheduled.
2. Tick Set start date and pick the date and time the preorder should begin. Leave it unticked to start now.
3. Tick Set end date and pick when it should stop. Leave it unticked to run until you stop it.
4. Save. The summary line under the fields confirms, for example Preorder starts on 1 Oct 2026, ends on 15 Oct 2026.

Times follow your store’s timezone. When the end date passes, the campaign shows Preorder ended on … and a Publish button to run it again.

Publish and Unpublish

The button at the top of the campaign changes with the state: Publish for a Draft, Unpublish for a Live campaign. Unpublishing asks: “Continue selling out of stock” was turned on for all of the products in this campaign. Do you want to turn this off?

• Yes, turn off “Continue selling” for products: out-of-stock products go back to Sold out. Choose this in most cases.
• No, keep “Continue selling” on: customers can keep buying out-of-stock products as normal orders, with no preorder button or note.

Deleting a campaign asks the same question.

What Draft and Unpublished do to the store

The Preorder button turns back into Add to cart or Sold out depending on stock. Existing orders are not affected. The selling plan the campaign created in Shopify stays attached to the products but is not offered.

Back in Stock campaigns

Back in Stock campaigns are either Live or Draft. They cannot be scheduled.

Good to know

• On the Free plan, reaching 25 preorders in a month unpublishes all preorder campaigns three days later. See Preorder limits.
• A campaign needs at least one product before it can be published or scheduled.

Still stuck?

Contact support from the app with the campaign name and the dates you set.