TL;DR. Click Save while you work to keep changes safe. Click Publish to go Live for visitors. Pause anytime.
The lifecycle states
A popup has one of these states:
Draft: you've saved it but visitors don't see it.
Live: published; visitors are seeing it now (if targeting allows).
Paused: previously Live, now off. Settings are preserved.
Archived: removed from the active list but kept for analytics.
The campaign itself has its own state:
Active: the campaign and its Live popup are running.
Paused: the campaign is off; even a Live popup doesn't show.
For a popup to actually appear on the storefront, both the campaign must be Active and the popup must be Live.
Save a draft
Click Save in the top right of the editor. Your changes are saved without affecting what visitors see.
You can close the editor and come back later; the draft persists.
Publish
Click Publish in the top right of the editor. The popup flips from Draft to Live. Within seconds, visitors hitting the storefront see it (subject to targeting rules and cache).
What if a popup was already Live and I change it?
Editing a Live popup keeps it Live. The new content goes out as soon as you click Save (and visitors fetch a fresh popup config). There's no separate "republish" needed.
Pause a campaign
In Forms > Campaigns, click More actions on the campaign card, then Pause. The campaign goes Paused; the popup doesn't show until you resume.
When to pause:
Out of stock; don't push more orders until restock.
Holiday is over; promo no longer applies.
Delete vs archive vs pause
Action | Use when |
Pause | Temporary off, will resume soon |
Archive | Done with this campaign, keep stats |
Delete | Created by mistake, no analytics to keep |
Delete is irreversible. Prefer Archive for anything that had real traffic.