How fast should Shopify bug fixes turn around?
Anything blocking a sale (checkout, payment, cart) should be fixed in hours, not days. Cosmetic issues can wait for the next release. "We'll get to it" is not a turnaround commitment; a number, in hours, is. If your current provider can't give you one, that's the answer.
Why turnaround time is the real product of a retainer
You're not really paying for a person to be available. You're paying for how fast a broken thing gets fixed relative to how much it's costing you while it's broken. A checkout bug at 11pm during a sale is a different problem than a typo in a footer, and a good retainer treats them differently on purpose.
A simple severity framework
- P1: revenue-blocking. Checkout broken, payment failing, a discount code crashing the cart. This should be acknowledged and fixed within hours, any time it happens, not just during business hours if you run sales outside them.
- P2: functionally broken, not blocking. A broken filter, a layout bug on one page, a feature not working as intended. Same working day is a fair standard.
- P3: cosmetic. Spacing, minor copy, non-critical visual polish. Fine to batch into the next scheduled release rather than fix in isolation.
The framework matters less than whether your provider has one at all. If every bug gets the same vague "we'll look into it," you have no way to know if a checkout-breaking issue is being treated with the urgency it needs.
What actually slows turnaround down
- An account manager relaying your message to a dev team, adding a full round trip before anyone technical even sees the bug.
- No staging environment, so every fix is riskier to ship and gets more hesitant, slower review.
- Unclear ownership: a freelancer with no backup, or an agency spread thin enough that "your" developer is shared across a dozen accounts with no priority system.
What "under 2 hours" looks like in practice
Our own average reply time on a working day is under 2 hours, a number we publish and measure rather than promise. No account manager relay: the person who answers is technical and can open the code directly. That's the standard we hold ourselves to across every retainer, including Miduty, on retainer for 3.5 years managing a high-traffic store with hundreds of daily orders, and Oxie Nutrition, on retainer since August 2023.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What's your average response time, in hours, and can you show a real example rather than describe it?
- Do severity tiers exist, or does every bug get treated the same?
- What happens outside business hours during a sale or launch?
- Who fixes it: the person I'm talking to, or someone they'll pass it to?
FAQ
What counts as an emergency versus a routine fix?
If it stops someone from completing a purchase (checkout, payment, cart) it's an emergency and belongs in the hours tier. If it's cosmetic or affects a small part of the experience, it can usually wait for the next scheduled release.
Do agencies charge extra for after-hours fixes?
Some do, especially outside a retainer. Ask about this before signing, specifically for the scenario that matters most: a checkout bug appearing during a sale outside business hours.
What if my current bug turnaround is too slow?
Start by asking your current provider for their actual average response time, in hours, not a general assurance. If they can't produce a number, that's usually the answer to why it feels slow.